I carry small, and for that I should be grateful. Life is just easier when you can squeeze yourself through tight places for longer, wear more normal clothes more often, and carry the extra burden of pregnancy closer to your center of gravity. There's less back pain. Longer-lasting privacy before the world feels themselves owed information about and control over your body. When it comes time to squeeze that baby through my pelvis, I confess relief in the knowledge that I build small babies.
Blessings, counted!
Despite all this, I don't always love carrying small.
"How far along are you?" is always followed by the double-take, the look of shock, and then the editorial comment. It might be intended as a compliment. "You're so tiny!" Or maybe the comment is self-deprecating, "I was a WHALE when I was pregnant!" Worst of all are the judgy comments, "You need to eat more." Perhaps I should carry around a picture of me eating almond butter straight from the jar with a spoon, and just stuff that in their face as response.
Sometimes I walk up to groups of people who start talking about the size of my belly without engaging me in the conversation. Discussing me like a sculpture of a pregnant woman. It's awkward.
At least I have an answer when the question is posed: "Where are you hiding the baby?"
"Oh, she's jammed right up in my ribcage, taking up my lung-space. I haven't had a decent deep breath in months!"
It's cute and it's true.
Yesterday, two people -- two separate people, both of whom I see with some regularity -- noticed, for the first time, that I was pregnant at all. "When is your duedate?" They asked. Three weeks. My duedate is three weeks away. Perhaps I should just tell them it's three months. It would be easier on all of us!
I don't wish I was carrying bigger, or building a bigger baby. I wouldn't trade this body of mine for some body of somebody else's. But I do wish there was more cultural comfort around different body shapes, including the carrying-small shape I'm currently sporting, and including the woman who is having a singlet but gets constantly asked about twins, and including people who don't have anybody residing in their internal organs at all. People, big and small, whose bodies are all theirs.
It seems we are haunted by some Platonic ideal of the human body in all of its various stages. It's toxic, and it's wearing on me.
Just think! In a month or so, you can get comments like "WOW! How did you lose the baby weight so fast? You don't look like you just had a baby at all! You're so lucky, after my second it took me a year to stop looking pregnant!"
ReplyDeleteI kid, sort of. I'm sorry people are making you feel somewhat self-conscious about how you carry pregnancies and annoyed at their input. I think your belly looks adorable & as long as you & baby are healthy, nothing else matters.
I know you don't have a name picked out yet, and can't predict when you will go into labor, but I'd like to point out that Sarahs born on November 23 turn out to be pretty cool people. :creepywink:
I completely understand. I'm on the other end of the spectrum and the comments that I get are equally irritating and exhausting. At 4 months pregnant, I look 7, and I have coworkers make comments all of the time. At 10 weeks, even my mother said, "Why are you showing so much?? Is it twins?" We already knew that it wasn't. I hadn't even gained a pound, but I liked very pregnant. It's a bit humiliating. It's like all other things in this culture of America that if it doesn't fit the standard, then it stands out. At least you will look nice and trim after the baby is born! Sometimes I like to just respond to their comments with, "I'm having triplets." We have to take it with a grain of salt....it would be even better if the salt came with a Margarita! ;) Hang in there Kate!
ReplyDeleteThree weeks away! I'm so excited for you! I soooo agree with you on carrying small. I'm 10 weeks away from my due date, and I really don't look pregnant at all. If I do look a tiny bit pregnant, most people assume it's leftover fat from my 10 month old daughter and miscarriage 3 months after she was born. I haven't really told anyone I'm pregnant again. I tend to be really morning sick up until the third trimester or even all the way through it, so I end up losing a lot of weight. Currently I'm still 5lbs under my pre-pregnancy weight, and it was really hard to get back up to that high! Since I didn't tell anyone about this pregnancy, I've been spared the disapproving comments about not eating enough, which has been a huge relief. The worst comments I've gotten in the past are along the lines of my morning sickness just being in my head. Umm, no, it's called hyperemesis gravidarum, and I'm not the only woman plagued by it. - KJ
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