Hunger With a Side of Insecurity

As mentioned recently, I’ve had a bounty of questions come my way during pregnancy, the worst ones coming from women I rarely know – women who probably only found my name out a few weeks ago. During said week of stupid questions, I got this whopper:

Her: So how much weight have you gained?

Me (inner voice): HOW MUCH WEIGHT HAVE I GAINED?! Seriously??

That’s right.

To be honest, I expected this question a lot sooner, so 22w3d isn’t bad. I’d also like to think that any weight I have gained isn’t noticeable (apart from the bump), which is why they’ve asked, but for all they know I could have one hell of a bump band on that nicely conceals everything.

S will tell you that since about 12w, I’ve been quite self-conscious about my weight. I would ask her whether I looked pregnant yet and whether I had this ‘bit’ before. See, I lost 3-4 stone last year and I aimed to keep it off until I fell pregnant at least, and even then I wouldn’t be gorging under the pretence of “Well I’m going to get fat anyway…” I aimed to eat normally albeit make some small changes for the sake of Beansprout. However, an unexpected hunger where I want to rip my arm off and eat it, that attacks every few hours, has meant that I eat a lot more than I would have done previously. It’s very frustrating as whatever I eat sometimes is not enough and I have to raid the kitchen for more!

Early on, I started with dried fruit and nuts, fresh fruit, or popcorn as snacks between meals, but they now don’t cut it – I’m hungry an hour or so later despite drinking a regular intake of water on top of eating. So, I’ve now moved on to snack pieces of cheese, rice crackers, and cereal bars (Nakd bars are one of my faves, but can be quite expensive) as snacks in addition to the current snackage, which is helping in comparison to before – but I now can’t avoid thinking how much of a difference that it’s making to my general waistline, especially as I can’t do anything about it.

Without boring you with detail, I eat quite healthy meals – not too big, not too small – but I know I now have to eat a little extra to compensate for Beansprout as they’re taking everything from me first. With this, I eat a lot more bread than before (although it is still wholegrain) as it holds me a lot longer, as well as a lot more dairy (which has been changed from skimmed to semi-skimmed). I’ve moved back to white pasta and rice from brown, as the taste of brown is now disgusting to me, and I’m eating lean red meat more regularly than before. On top of this, I’m not as active any more as I get out of breath, become tired, or my sciatic pain kicks in, so with all this it’s expected that I will put on a bit of weight but I can’t help but worry at the same time.

It’s getting me down, I’m not going to lie – and I really don’t want this to come off as a moan as I have wanted this more than anything in the world. I really do enjoy being pregnant and in comparison to other people I’ve spoken to, I’m having quite a nice pregnancy apparently, but there are some things I didn’t count on during pregnancy, and this hunger with insecurity on the side is one of them. I don’t want it to be there; I want to have fun and go “What the hell!”, but at the same time, I worked hard to lose the weight, I don’t want to put it all back on.

I’m sure this is a normal feeling, but it doesn’t make it any easier. I doubt there is anything that can be said or done to help – I just need to deal with it and reassure myself that what I’m doing is fine as long as I’m gaining weight at a steady rate (I really do need to get on those scales) but I can’t help but feel insecure about the changes in my body. Beansprout won’t give a monkey’s what I look like, and S sure as hell doesn’t – so why should I?

K