Fat Ass Friday: Fat Pregnancy #1

Yesterday I had my first doctor and midwife pregnancy appointment. Both of the women I see are grounded and open to hearing their patients. I felt comfortable saying that I didn’t want to have a fear based pregnancy on account of my high BMI. That I understand some of the perceived medical risks, and I don’t mind the extra measures taken to insure the safety of my kid, but I don’t want to be scarred into unnecessary procedures (early epidural) when all I want is a water birth. I was told that I wouldn’t be able to have a water birth at most facilities because I am considered high risk due to my weight. My doctor said that she wished there were different terms because I am not actually high risk, but should I have problems, it would be hard to find staff that could pull me out of a pool. I get it. I get some of it. I wouldn’t want to pull me out of a pool either. If I felt comfortable, I would have a pool here in my house. The walls are paper thin and the last thing I want is to have my neighbors listen to me give birth.

The meeting was largely based around my weight, but not in a negative way. A factual way. This is what the NHS will support, this is what they consider a problem, these are your options. In every book I have read so far, there is a list a mile long about how being fat risks fat children, and fat children require more c-sections, and have problems as they develop. I do not subscribe to this fear based mentality because fat women are told to have early epidurals, not for immediate pain relief but because being induced causes high rates of needing a c-section. I was over 9 pounds when I was born and my brother over 10. I am fat, my brother is not. We have both been healthy. My mother was induced because they were afraid of us getting any bigger and tearing my mum in half. Her labours were quick and she hardly tore. She did it without an epidural, because she was too far progressed to have one. She is my model for my pregnancy.

An amazing site that I have been reading lately is junkfoodscience. Sandy Szwarc, BSN, RN, CCP has done an amazing job posting about perceived truths in healthcare and nutrition. Read her credentials, she knows her stuff. One of the articles I have appreciated is in her series “Obesity Paradox”. The links to this series can be found in her sidebar. The one that is pertinent to this post is called Baby Paradox. It is about the benefit of having heavier babies at birth. It is definaly worth a read no matter if you are big or small.

The thing about pregnancy, especially if it is your first, is there is a certain sense of panic. This panic can send the most introspective, grounded and empowered person looking for outside opinion for comfort. Very few times do we find it outside of ourselves, and in pregnancy this is no exception. Remembering to question athority and remember, women have been having babies since the beginning of time. Our bodies are built for it. I am glad there is medicine available if I need it. I am glad to have my doctor on my side. I am also going to put forth a considerable amount of trust that my body will be the vessel I intend it to be.

Joining the massess

Identity:

There is a newness I am adjusting to. It is yet another change of identity. I have never been one to go with the crowd. Throughout my life I have spent considerable energy on the alternative. I once had a friend who said she envied the freedom that my lifestyle then possessed, of course I was living in a VW van and didn’t have any debt. My answer to her was that it is as hard for me to sit still as it would be for her to keep moving. Over the years that has changed and I have started to enjoy being in one place for years at a time. I still consider myself part of the fringe, but I do have debt now, I do have a credit card, and I do have a monogamous relationship.

And now I am pregnant. And I am entering into the most popular activity the world over. Parenting. I am joining the biggest biological response that has ever been! I am expanding our species! I am no longer on the fringe. Even if I do alternative birthing and alternative child raising-we are still doing it. It is like when people have cupcakes at their wedding to do “something different”. That is me. In corduroy and flower prints, busting out a kid in a pool, joining the masses. The thing that makes me different? No maternity pay.

Education, Fat, Sex

Interesting articles that have passed my way recently:

Dismissing critical pedagogy: Denis Rancourt vs. University of Ottawa by Jesse Freeston

This is an interesting story about a professor who is breaking the rules of learning to turn our automaton producing institutions into students keen to learn and have actual learning retention and understanding of the materials presented.

“Critical pedagogy, for Rancourt, is all about democratizing the classroom. Students are given input over the curriculum, they are encouraged to take classroom discussion wherever it may lead, and there are no grades. Rancourt's preference is a pass/fail system, but when the university refused to allow this he announced on the first day of classes in 2007 that all students would be receiving an A+.”

(Thanks Adam for the link.)



What Do Women Want? by Daniel Bergner

Is an article from the NY Times about a study at the University of Toronto about female sexuality. Hitting on interesting facts like woman can be heterosexual and still have strong sexual reactions to homesexual, male and female, copulation stimulus, and even animal stimulus. It is a compelling article that addresses the complexities of female sexuality.

“Meredith Chivers is a creator of bonobo pornography. She is a 36-year-old psychology professor at Queen’s University in the small city of Kingston, Ontario, a highly regarded scientist and a member of the editorial board of the world’s leading journal of sexual research, Archives of Sexual Behavior.”

(Thanks Lana for the link)

Does My Butt Look Fat? by Kate Harding

Kate Harding has a favored blog in the fat acceptance world. She is educated and at times provoking. This article, put out in Salon, is good example of how people are claiming the word “fat” and how identity is tied up in labels.

(Thanks Rachel for the link.)

Happy Reading..

In the past few weeks, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I have learned of some fellow pregnant peers who had lost their babies. That, along side of the steadily dissipating group of women on my Babycenter birth group has led me to mild nervousness. I am eager to know our kid is kicking it up in there. That s/he is diggin the flat and growing up accordingly. I have also tried to limit the amount of time I read or watch anything too emotional or negative. The other night we watched Slumdog Millionaire and there were times in that movie I wasn’t sure if I was going to throw up, start hyperventilating, or collapse into a ball of tears. That, I told myself, would be my last really painful media input until I know a little more about the kid inside me. So I put down the pregnancy books and went to the bookshelf. Most of the books I have provoke emotion or memories that unsettle. I like that about reading. Getting really involved in characters and living along side them. I tried to pick one out that wouldn’t be too negative. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. I have read this book a few times before and always really enjoyed it. It is a small book, one that is good if you haven’t been reading for a while, and it is a collection of short stories. The commonality is that the characters are Indian. Some are from India, others are of Indian decent but are American. That is all I remembered. That and the short story the book is named after is about an Indian man who is a language interpreter for a doctor. I read the first story last night and had to laugh. A story about a couple that fell apart because of a miscarriage. Fuck.

It's alright to cry...

The biggest change, yes even bigger than not wanting sex, over the past few months has been my need for absolute quiet. No music in the car, no music at home. I don't even like it when the one movie I watch a day with my man is too loud. My mind hurts. Well today that changed a bit. I am seeking out some peaceful music. Not Enya, just music that soothes. This reminded me of a tape I bought years ago called Celtic Lullabies. It is a children's lullaby compilation by a group called Eden's Bridge, although I only learned that while looking them up for this post. I bought it on a whim out of a discount basket in a kids store when I lived in the states. I used to listen to it when I needed to feel loved or soothed. I particularly liked listening to it before I went to bed. Not all the songs hit me, but the ones that did still do to this day. Remembering them made me remember some of my children's records that shaped my childhood. I think in a former blog, I wrote a post about Free to Be You and Me by Marlo Thomas and Friends. I revisited this album when I was in high school. One of those things my friends and I would do when we were being nostalgic, like listening to the books that came with a record where you had to turn the page at the sound of the chime. The thing that made that album so special, and why I am still convinced that it was largely responsible for the freaky feminist powerhouse I am today, is because it was written about gender equality and the need to dissolve gender boundaries. Songs about boys who play with dolls and girls who like worms. Songs about parents being people and not aliens, and that they have feelings too. Songs that taught a simple Canadian kid not to limit her experience or emotional expression because of her sex, race or place in society. Not bad for a kid's album.

This song in particular, goes through my head when people say I am an overemotional person. It goes through my head after I tell them to fuck off.

It's alright to cry,
crying gets the mad out of you,
raindrops from your eyes,
it might make you feel better.

It's alright to cry little boy. I know some big boys that cry too

This one I still think of when people say that I am doing a disservice to my child because I am fat.... It also makes me smile considering Micheal Jackson is talking about not wanting to change.

pregnant woman loses libido, reward offered

At least something on the farm is up for it. I seemed to have lost my libido somewhere in the wrapping paper mess of Christmas. Perhaps, like my nausea, that too is from my multivitamins?
I knew of 3 people, other than myself who were pregnant. 2 of them have miscarried within the past week and the other doesn't seem to acknowledge that she is even pregnant. It is a vulnerable time, I know. It calls for putting up one's blinders and tuning out to the losses around you otherwise you start to live in perpetual fear.

So I focus on the little big things like my libido...

Feel free to send naughty photos, stories or toys to help inspire.

walk...

A break in nausea allowed for a small walk today. The longest walk I have taken in over a week. A week where my house became a prison. The smells, the darkness and the perpetual cold damp hung on me. In one day, after one walk, it is the comforting place we have made it be. It is home.

Beautiful Winter in the Weald

Week 8

I have been lost to the world this past week. Between massage clients and long trips to and from Brighton, I have managed to crash hard this weekend. Coming down with a cold while pregnant isn’t really the most fun thing I have ever been through. In all honesty, the vomit that seems to be perpetually lodged in the back of my throat, hasn’t been all that fun either. All my energy is consumed in the battle of negativity and neutrality. I strive to remember why it is that I am feeling the way I am, and not to panic that I may have 2 more months of this feeling. I keep re-reading the facts that my little one is beginning to move around now, that it has fingers and toes and that it is bigger than a strawberry. Those facts remind me that the general low feeling I am having is for a damn good reason. I also appreciate the fact that I can sleep until 1 in the afternoon on a Saturday because I have no obligations other than to be well for this kid. This is something I won’t be able to do in less than 7 months.

I think I expected to have an uncontrollable amount of love for my little one right from the beginning. The fact that I have to remind myself to be conscious and present of its existence beyond my own discomfort makes me feel a little less worthy of the situation.

I have a compulsion to read blogs I hate by writers I generally despise. I figure it has to do with the desire to remember I have strong opinions. It is also to remember that there is a diversity of folks out there that really act, think, believe in this stuff. I read them in the morning and forget about them almost immediately afterwords. Then I sit in front of the fire and thank Every entity out there for the life I have.

I may feel nauseous but all I am doing is crapping my brain out. I have morning sickness out my butt. What the heck? Must I do everything differently? I had an expectation that I would be swimming and doing yoga all the time, that long walks of reflection would occupy my days. I have done yoga a few times this week but can’t bring myself to go to a pool or for a walk. I have no energy and the energy I do have is very focused on the sick feelings that rumble in my tummy.

In other news, the doctor’s visit went really well. I really enjoyed meeting her. Very straight down the line yet very compassionate. As D said, she handled my over the top humor and exuberance well.

The bottom line is that I am being treated like a princess and couldn’t be more thankful for it. I miss having any women around me, for it seems the time to have your sisters close. That being said, the love I feel is strong I am being given the space I need to feel sick and do nothing.

It is good being pregnant.

It has been a pretty great holiday season. From Dorset to Ontario, the traveling has been rather extensive. There has been lots of good food, good love and good news. It looks like D and I will be welcoming a little something something at the end of August this year. It has been a mixture of emotions, which hormonally makes sense. I once thought I was pregnant before and was elated. This time I am overcome by a sense of responsibility and life changing power. We are both overwhelmed with the information but are having fun getting into a more healthy routine.

I go to the doctors later today for my first check up. I hear that since I am “morbidly obese” that I won’t have a choice in my birth plan. No water birth, just straight up hospital birth… which is the last thing I would ever choose for myself. I am nervous about the exam and getting back into the main stream mentality that I am about to drop dead because of my fat ass.

Wish me luck.