PANTS PANTS PANTS

[contents: some mildly NSFW pics]

Namely, what I am currently doing about mine.

I'm working on putting together a big post about what's commonly referred to as "maternity clothing", and what I'm referring to as pregnancy clothing or clothes, but in the mean time, shit, my pants don't fit. Since pants not fitting is often one of the first clothing-related side effects of pregnancy people experience, I figured I'd post what I'm doing about it.

I was actually in not-pregnant pants up until about 18 weeks, and comfortably. I could button them, they weren't super-tight, everything was cool. Then I'd have to unbutton them at the end of the day. Then it was more comfortable to go about with them unbuttoned, but I could still button and zip them if I had to. Then buttoning and zipping them was really tough. Now... yeah fuck it I'm not trying I give no shits anymore. They still fit my butt and thighs.

But since it's difficult to walk around just with one's pants unbuttoned all the time - not least because they will fall off your ass, and people kind of frown upon seeing one's knickers in public, here are two things I have been using:

• Hair ties. I haven't done this when I'm out and about, but when at home, I will take a ponytail holder/hair tie, loop it through the buttonhole of my jeans, then loop the other end over the button. That way I can leave the button undone and the zipper undone too, yet my pants stay up. You can also use a rubber band. If you need a bit more room, a bigger tie or band can give that to you. Here's what it looks like:





Upsides: Super inexpensive. You probably have what you need in your house already. Easy to expand, because you can use a bigger band or tie, or loop a couple together in a chain. If your shirt is long enough, this will be covered up.

Downsides: If your shirt rides up, everyone sees your knickers. This is less practical if you have to leave the house. It also requires some manual dexterity to do, so if you have e.g. arthritis or swollen fingers, this can be tougher.


• Bella Bands. Yeah, I know, these are super-hyped. And they're not inexpensive. I splurged and ordered two from Amazon. I was skeptical, and I'd read the occasional scathing review. And then I tried them, and oh my fucking gods, they actually work as advertised. I am still kind of in shock about this.
  
  What the Bella Band is is a tube of stretchy fabric that you wear around your waist/belly/hips that holds up your pants or skirt, smoothing out the bumps of the unbuttoned button, and also covering up any joys of a shirt that's now too short. The fabric is 84% nylon and 16% spandex, and the new versions have a bit of silicone around the bottom to hold it in place (If you've ever bought stay-up thigh-high stockings, it's the same stuff). They are machine washable and dryable. They look super small when you take them out of the package, and the fabric looks way too thin to accomplish what it's supposed to accomplish. I'm not really sure what witchcraft is involved that it's not.
  
  Sizing is from pant sizes 0-24, so not a huge plus-size range, unfortunately... but also better than a lot of other "neat product" makers, sadly. I also suspect that the 26-28 range might be able to get away with the largest size. They are very stretchy. I found their sizing chart accurate; I wear usually an 18 or 20 in pants, and have a narrow waist with wide hips, so I ordered a 3, which fits very nicely. You do have to go to the manufacturer's site to find the sizing chart. And yes, they are LONG. Again, I'm 6' tall, with a pretty long torso, and they cover my butt and come up to just under my bra.
  
  Getting it on can be interesting. I usually scrunch it up, then either step in to it, like a slip-on skirt, or work it over my head. It manages to be tight, without binding. Like, it definitely lays flat against my skin, and is tight enough to hold up my jeans generally, but I can easily fit my arm under there, pull it outwards, etc., and it's not compressing anything, like e.g. Spanx would.
  
  Here is what they look like on me, both "wear out of the house", and with my shirt off, so you can see how tall they are. Your model is 6' tall, around 285 pounds, and 20 weeks pregnant in these photos. Yes you can see my bra really clearly in one of them:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  You can also make Bella-Band-like bands yourself in custom sizes. Here is a great tutorial with pictures on how to do this with a regular sewing machine. Here is a tutorial for a no-sew version (although it relies on being able to buy a t-shirt or cami that would work). The only thing missing in the first tutorial is sizing information. But that's easy: measure around your hips. Subtract 2-3" from that measurement. This is how long to cut your fabric. As for height, measure from where you want the bottom to hit from where you want the top to hit on your body, then double that measurement (since this tutorial has you fold the fabric, making a double layer). Add 1" for seam allowance, and this is how tall to cut your fabric. You definitely want to get a knit with some lycra/Spandex in it. If you're not sure where to go for those, I recommend Fabric.com.
  
  Downsides: yeah, it can be a challenge to get on, moreso than just a shirt. Also, I've noticed that after a while, I do have to hike up my jeans, which usually involves flipping the bottom of the band up, pulling up my jeans, then putting the band back down. Then again, I have to hike up my jeans all the damn time even if they are buttoned, so this is less the fault of the Bella Band and more the fault of gravity. It also doesn't deal well if I have to squat down and get something - jeans come down, band often comes up, readjusting happens. Also, they cover up my pockets, as well as my belt loops, so I can't put shit in my pockets easily, nor can I clip my keys to my back belt loops as I am accustomed to doing. And again, they're expensive. I dropped $50 on just two of them.
  
  Upsides: oh holy shit I don't have to buy new paaaaaaants. And I do personally find them really comfortable. It's also been about 20F here, so you know, I'm not in 90F with 90% humidity, which I suspect might change my viewpoint a bit.
  

If you have more tips on dealing with pants while pregnant, OMG, please share.

Things Happening To My Pregnant Ass This Week: Week 20

[contents: TMI]

HOW  IT ALREADY WEEK 20 HOW AM I HALFWAY THROUGH THIS ALREADY OH MY GODS

The Kid has discovered that kicking my bladder and cervix while I am laying in bed at night is possibly the BEST ENTERTAINMENT EVER. For The Kid, anyway. I am far less entertained. Because it means I have to get up every twenty freaking minutes to go pee. Awesome.

The Kid kicks and moves pretty frequently, actually.

My belly is way less squishy, just sort of all around. I have, for lack of a better term, a divided belly. There's a deep crease right at my waist, that sort of separates the belly fat into the upper and lower portions. The lower portion has been significantly less squishy for a while now, but suddenly this week the upper portion is less squishy. The fundus of my uterus is just barely above my belly button, so it's not that my uterus is under there. I think it's just that everything is starting to get noticeably compacted now as my uterus grows, so there's less room to squish things. It's weird.

Also super weird is yesterday both The Man and I noticed that my skin is... splotchy. Kind of all over. I'm usually super pale, and while the circles under my eyes got ridiculously dark pretty early on, the rest of me stayed pretty pale and even-toned. And now I have splotchy, slightly darker patches all over my skin. The Man noticed it on my hip. I noticed it on my boobs. It's tough to see in a picture, because the splotches aren't that much darker. But in person, if you look close enough, they're there. Hooray pregnancy hormones!

I also walk differently. I walk... heavier, is how I'd put it. More flat-footed, more stompy. I'm usually pretty light on my feet, just naturally and from dancing for so long. I mean, you'd hear the creaks of the floor as I walked down the hall, but not my individual foot falls. Now, you can definitely hear my feet hitting the floor. My weight is just in a different place, and my pelvis has definitely changed shape, and it's weird. I also have to be careful how long I'm on my feet. It's more difficult to keep the very good posture my back needs, and if I'm up too long, I get tired and slouch more and then my leg starts going numb. I'd be worried about it, except a, it's happened before, and b, it immediately stops if I sit or lay down.

My skin is also RIDICULOUSLY DRY. Oh my fucking god. The weekend before Thanksgiving it was very cold, and extremely dry, and suddenly I had patches of scaly skin in the vees between all of my fingers. I thought I'd spilled something while cooking and hadn't noticed it, and it had dried, but NOPE THAT'S MY SKIN. I had my OB take a look at it last week, and she concurs - it's just dry. Which I figured, since it's scaly, not itchy, not very red, not raised, etc. and so on. It's also responding well to copious amounts of lotion and body butter. It hasn't gone completely away, and I've kind of given up that it will, but it can be lessened. The matching scaly patch on my nose - just one side of my nose, mind you - has gone away. And then I saw flaky skin on my damn nipples the other day. *sigh* So basically I would like to bathe in a vat of moisturizer, please.

Finally, speaking of my boobs, they're heavy. I mean, I wear - well, wore - a 40I before I got pregnant anyway, so it's not like they weren't heavy beforehand. And they did grow a bit in the first few weeks. But all of a sudden they just feel heavy and more solid, in a way they didn't before.

What Is Actually Complicating My Pregnancy

[contents: medical, tmi, fat hate, scare-mongering]

Before I get any further: YES, THE KID (AND I) ARE BOTH FINE.

Okay!

It's a really popular position to assume that all fat folks who get pregnant have high-risk pregnancies, and the resulting babies have tons of problems, and it's just oh my god terrible and WHY WOULD YOU GET PREGNANT IF YOU'RE FAT DON'T YOU KNOW YOU AND YOUR BABY WILL DIE. See also: pretty much any mainstream article about obesity and pregnancy published in the last ten-plus years, or so many entries on My OB Said What?! (seriously, that site needs major trigger warnings).

Except that position is not actually based in reality.

I'm not saying that there are no risks associated with (note: ASSOCIATED WITH) being fat during pregnancy. Fat pregnant folks are at higher risk of gestational diabetes and preeclampsia. The fetuses of fat pregnant people are at higher risk of being born large for gestational age, of having neural tube defects, etc. etc. etc.

What even the American College of Gynecologists doesn't tell you is that while yes, obesity is associated with higher risks (that is, we have no idea about what causes any of these), including things like OH MY GOD A FOUR-TIMES GREATER RISK of things... the actual, numerical risk is not actually that high. Not that you can tell from the ACOG paper, or indeed, many reports, because they don't actually include the baseline risk numbers.

The thing is, when you multiply a very small risk by four, the risk is STILL SMALL. And all of these things? Occur in very small numbers of pregnancies. Are they scary and bad? Absolutely. But even if your risk is elevated for them, that is far, so far, from a guarantee you'll get them. Even if you are "morbidly obese", your risk of any of these complications is less than 10% - in some cases, WAY less than 10%. For example, the CDC says that your risk of gestational diabetes is between 2-10%. (They also say here that it's between 2-5%, and that "some - but not all [people] with gestational diabetes are overweight before getting pregnant". Not even the CDC is telling you the fat causes gestational diabetes, y'all.) Is your risk higher than in folks that aren't fat? In some cases, yeah. Is it ever YOU WILL DIE AND SO WILL YOUR BABY high, as it's often presented? Not. Even. Close. Fact is, the vast majority of fat pregnant folks have perfect fine, healthy pregnancies, and give birth to perfectly fine, healthy babies. But that doesn't sell diets and papers and ads and shit.

These also aren't the only complications of pregnancy though. (And I have my theories about why they're what we hear about... namely, WE CAN LINK THEM TO THE FAT OMG). Last week, I was referred to a maternal-fetal medicine specialist. Not because of my weight, thank fuck, because it really isn't complicating my pregnancy. I mentioned here that there was a finding at my midpoint ultrasound just before Thanksgiving that resulted in a referral. The finding wasn't about The Kid - The Kid looks fine, is measuring spot on for the due date, is extremely active, everything seems to be going well. The finding was that my cervix was a bit on the short side.

(Here is where I spent an hour trying to find how common a short cervix is in pregnancy, and found no good answers. Basically, judging by this study and a few others, at least 95% of all pregnant folks do NOT have a short cervix. It's actually pretty hard to find baseline risk information for any condition. So frustrating.)

Having a short cervix around this point in the pregnancy is associated with a higher risk of delivering early, and the shorter your cervix is, the higher the risk. I'm not in the highest risk category, but my cervix was short enough to up my risk, so I was referred to a specialist to be evaluated and see what, if any, treatment would be necessary. So I got a second ultrasound in a week, which again confirmed that The Kid looks just fine. The ultrasound was pretty entertaining. I'm pretty sure The Kid was napping when it started. Then after a minute or two of wand-on-belly, I started seeing hand-waving and kicking... and was kicked pretty constantly the rest of the day. Thank you for expressing your opinion, Kid. But the ultrasound also confirmed that yeah, my cervix is a little short.

No one is really sure why some cervixes are short. Theories include natural variation, inflammation, previous cervical trauma, and more. (Nobody links it to OMG THE FAT, SORRY HATERS.) There's also a difference between just a short cervix and what is called an incompetent cervix (and isn't that just a lovely health term). Some people will tell you that any cervix sufficiently short is incompetent, while others will say no, there has to be early dilation. Like many health topics, it can get somewhat confusing, but long story short, HAH, my cervix is just short, not incompetent.

I also mentioned earlier this week that I'd been all over Cochrane, checking to see what the actual risk was and what the treatment plans were. Cochrane kindly confirmed my assessment (higher than usual, but not panic time), and that of the two treatments (cervical cerclage, which is literally stitching the cervix closed, and progesterone supplementation), for people like me, who just have a short cervix, no signs of pre-term labor, and no history of pre-term delivery, progesterone is the way to go. It's associated with better outcomes all around, including reducing the rates of pre-term birth and neonatal complications. As I mentioned previously, the specialist I saw was on the same page as me - thank FUCK for doctors that read and understand research. And thank FUCK for doctors that love when their patients read the research. And a final, super-hearty thank FUCK for doctors who don't engage in fat shaming - my weight came up exactly ZERO times in this appointment, which is exactly how it should have been.

So I am now on supplemental progesterone. I go back in about a week for another special ultrasound to check my cervix, and so long as it hasn't gotten worse, then I get to go back in a month or so. Is it considered a complication? Yes (but technically, so is my well-controlled hypothyroidism ALSO NOT CAUSED BY FAT, THANKS HATERS). Is it a big one? No, and I'm thankful for it. I just have to take some additional meds and see another doctor once in a while, and that's okay for me.

A Brief Primer on Research

[contents: fat hate]

I wanted to write a little bit about how I find and evaluate research related to my health and health care.

Being able to find, understand, and evaluate research is a very useful skill, most especially when it comes to being a fat person in the doctor's office - or a pregnant person. (Or ANY person.) Yes, you should be able to go right in to the doctor's office and get appropriate, correct care. Aaaaaaand I and many other fat people have run in to the exact opposite. I also have problems with the public health campaigns about being informed patients, etc. and so on. Do I think it's amazing to be informed about your treatment? ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY. However, these campaigns put nearly all of the responsibility on the patient, and that's not where it belongs. Doctors need to step up their game (and yes, I realize they're as much a part of the system which incentivizes the exact opposite as anyone else... but that doesn't mean they're completely powerless. And yes, the system absolutely needs to change).

That being said, pretty much the only way that I've gotten appropriate treatment is doing my own research, and going in armed with it. But doing research on medical conditions, symptoms, treatments, can be really tough. Sure, the internet is great... and also filled with a lot of misinformation. Plus, getting access to the actual research journal articles is difficult and expensive for most people. I can get many of the actual articles... if I physically go to my alma mater's library. Then you have to evaluate whether the research was actually any good, then you run in to websites that purport to have information and it's rubbish... sorting through the utter flood of information can be tough.

But there's a couple of rules that can make it easier. Here's some of the ones I use:

Science reporting is shit.

If it is reported in a magazine, newspaper, whatever, it's shit. There are some blogs that actually do some good reporting - I link to some in the sidebar. But in general, science reporting in the media is terrible. Few if any reporters understand the difference between correlation and causation, few if any reporters are equipped with the skills to evaluate the quality of the research, and some of them will straight up report things that were not actually found in the study. Scientists are biased. So are journalists. Never doubt that they're selling you a narrative, not science.

I won't say "OH NEVER READ STORIES ABOUT NEW STUDIES", because shit, I do, and besides that, they're pretty unavoidable. But please, please, be super skeptical about them, and if you want to check them, go to the source - read at least the abstract of the study yourself to see what it actually says. Abstracts are usually available for free (and are the short summary of the research, usually about a paragraph long). Google Scholar can often help you find them. Another good place to check is PubMed.

For more information on how mainstream science reporting is usually crap, see this post on Well-Rounded Mama.

Most research does not - and CAN not - find the cause of something.

Following on from that first point, how many articles have you read about "OBESITY CAUSES X!", or similar? Probably a lot. The problem is, the vast, vast majority of research doesn't actually find causes. At best, it finds a correlation.

Doing research to determine the cause of something is actually quite complex. It's one of the things I learned to do in graduate school. It's not impossible, but it's also not often done. There are very strict conditions that have to exist in order to do it, and so many things you have to control for and account for and it's just really complicated. To get an idea of the complications, I link to Hills' criteria of causation in the sidebar. In order to prove causation, you have to meet those criteria. Most research doesn't. So any time you see "WE HAVE FOUND THE CAUSE OF X" in health research, be suuuuuper skeptical.

As for what research does usually find, it's a correlation - that is, "we find these two things occurring together pretty often, more often than we figure we would with random chance". You might also hear "is associated with" - that still means "correlation". The problem is, two things can be correlated, but that correlation tells you absolutely nothing about whether one causes the other - or if there's a third factor, unknown or unmeasured, that causes both. Shorthand that's popularly used for this concept is "CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION"; you might have seen that on Twitter. It's pretty key in research, and it gets forgotten a lot.

That's not to say that research that finds a correlation is useless - far from it. We can make some pretty good guesses based off of correlative research. But research that finds a correlation does not ever prove we have found the cause of something. So any time someone tells you "well X causes Y medical condition or biological effect", feel free to give them all of the side-eye.

Research, researchers, and publishers are biased - just like everyone.

A whole lot of research doesn't meet the criteria of good research design. Without taking extensive courses in research design, just keep this in the back of your head. There's also a fair amount of research that gets published that is straight up made up. Then there's the bias in publishing - a positive result, as in, "this thing we tried showed an effect", is way easier to publish than "we tried this thing and it didn't work". The latter does get published sometimes, but not as often.

There's also dominant narratives in research - it's why you don't hear about the numerous studies that show that weight loss really is difficult and doesn't last long term, and you DO hear about all of the studies that show that oh this new thing causes weight loss! The acceptable story right now, in medicine, research, reporting, is that OMG FAT IS BAD and WEIGHT LOSS IS GOOD, and things that are contrary to those notions don't get the press. It's also why you often see studies about obesity that say one thing in their results section (e.g. "no significant reduction in weight was found in the study population") and another in their conclusion ("this intervention is an effective weight loss treatment and should be recommended") I WISH I WERE MAKING THIS UP.

Then there's my next point...

Follow the money.

Conflict of interest is a real thing in science, and it's a big way that bias gets introduced. Check out who funds studies - chances are, if it's a study that trumpets weight loss, or a weight loss program that works, it was funded by the person or company who invented said program, or who benefits financially from weight loss. Similarly, studies that find that sports drinks are effective are almost always funded by companies that make sports drinks. Isn't it funny how that works out?

Well, no, it's not funny, because it's bullshit, and it leads to a lot of really crap research. And it's also not to say that, say, federally funded research isn't biased. But it's more likely to be more biased if the funder benefits financially from it.

Check Cochrane.

The Cochrane Collaborative is an independent, international organization dedicated to cataloguing and evaluating health-related research. They are highly respected, and very reliable. I won't say they're completely unbiased, because no one and nothing is, but they work really hard to NOT be.

You can probably find what they call a "Cochrane Review" on just about any health topic. What they do is they comb the lists of all research trials related to a topic, evaluate the quality of the trials, then combine them all to come up with what they are all in general saying. They provide this in multiple languages, and also do a "plain-language" summary. For free.

For an example, here is their review regarding weight loss in pregnancy for obese women. WELP SORRY MIDWIFE YOUR RECOMMENDATIONS ARE WRONG AND NOT BASED IN THE SCIENCE WE HAVE.

You can also view the Cochrane Summaries, which are the short, versions of the reviews. They can be really helpful to print off and bring to your doctor's office. I was recently all up in them because of a finding on an ultrasound I had last week (and helpfully, they confirmed what I thought - that it's not that big of a deal, and if we wanted to do anything, what I got recommended was the thing to do - the finding was about me, not The Kid, btw). I went to my doctor's office with the relevant summaries printed and SHOCKER, did not even need them, because she was as up on the research as I was. But if she had recommended something that I knew from my reading wasn't going to be effective, I could whip out the summary and go "okay but that's not what the research says", and have the relevant research right there.

Seriously Cochrane is what policy-makers, health care professionals, pretty much everyone uses. Your doctor has probably heard of them, and if you say "Well here's the Cochrane review about that", most will actually listen. If they still say "well that's nice but" after you give them evidence like this... probably find a new doctor if you can. Seriously.

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So those are the rules I use when reading research. Anyone else got helpful tips to share?

Shit Fat Pregnant People Get Told: The What (Not) To Eat Edition

[contents: diet talk, disordered eating, medical, food restrictions, fat hate]

Everyone and their mother has advice on what to eat when you're pregnant. It's in every book, every provider I've seen so far (and I've been rotating among people in the practice, so that's three so far) has told me what (not) to eat. Random strangers give you advice. Seriously. EVERYONE.

Some of this advice falls under "what to do for morning sickness", which... is another topic entirely and so annoying. I'll probably cover that at some other point. What I wanted to talk about is the recommendations you get for your "pregnancy diet".

A lot of the books and sites you read are.. yeah, okay. The "YAY YOU'RE PREGNANT HERE'S THE INFORMATION ABOUT THE HOSPITAL" book I got at my first midwife appointment has this type of recommendation. Eat a variety of foods, heavier on the fruits and veg, try to get some stuff with calcium and protein, etc. and so on. Fairly reasonable so far as it goes, even if it does completely ignore people who have varied needs or dietary restrictions, and completely ignores folks for whom regular food is not a thing.

In fact, all of these recommendations are like that, whether the generalized ones you read in the books, or the ones most doctors and midwives will tell you to your face. On food stamps? No room for that here. Limited income? Food desert? No time to cook (or no energy to cook)? WHATEVER. These recommendations don't give a shit about your "problems". In fact, my care providers have never tried to see if I'm food insecure, beyond a single question on the intake questionnaire (which was FIVE PAGES LONG and had NO ROOM TO ACTUALLY ANSWER QUESTIONS) about if I were worried in any way about "money". Not actually about food or housing, just "money".  And with one line to try to cram an answer in. An answer you're giving to someone you haven't met yet and aren't sure you can trust. Super.

So yeah. Then you get to the stuff that's said to you in specific. In theory, these should be better! They're coming, usually, from people who know you, some of whom know your medical history in detail! HAHAHAHAH WHAT A FUNNY JOKE. These examples are all drawn from what I've been told so far. Please share your own in comments!

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Try to get some protein and a fruit or vegetable together at every meal.

On the scale of 1 to "are you trying to kill me", this is like a three, at least for me. The explanation was that fruits and veg are good for you, and having some protein with it would make sure that your blood sugar was more even and you stayed full longer. Which... the staying full longer is, yes, straight-up diet language. On the other hand, when you get nauseated as hell when you start getting hungry, not getting hungry after twenty minutes is a definite feature.

The blood sugar thing, I'm not entirely sure if that was "you're fat so you'll get the diabeetus", or just general good advice. I do know from past experience that if my blood sugar drops, bad things happen. If you've ever heard the term "hangry", yeah. THAT. So things that can help me not get to hangry are always appreciated. (Interestingly, this happens approximately not at all now that my thyroid is being treated. So many interesting things that I just took as my normal seem to be turning to be "nope your thyroid was fucked".) But there is some research showing that you'll probably be in a better mood, and overall feel better, if you're not riding a blood sugar roller coaster. So... yeah okay.

Fruits and veg, I'm one of the people for whom those sorts of things are really good. I know people for whom fruits and veg in general, or extra fruit and veg, would be absolutely detrimental to their health. From fucking up your potassium levels, to aggravating things like ulcerative colitis, fruits and vegetables are not actually good for everyone! Sure, many people benefit from the whole "five a day" thing that has been a feature of US public health campaigns for years (recently replaced with "More Matters")... but not even CLOSE to everyone. Turns out people are individuals! SHOCKING I KNOW.

But what makes this really less annoying for me was the "try to". Because it signals to me that this recommendation is coming from someone who understands that eating "perfectly", whatever that even is, is really not an attainable or reasonable goal. And that if I reported that I hadn't done this more often than I did, the follow up would more likely be a gentle reminder along the lines of "well keep trying", rather than straight-up fat shame. It's really the only recommendation I've gotten that has even a hint of awareness that everyone is different.

Eat a small meal every two hours.

You hear this in dieting, you hear this sometimes in HAES, and WOOOO I heard it in pregnancy. Some of the thinking behind this one is the same as the previous recommendation - try not to ride a blood sugar roller coaster. Some of this is to hopefully prevent nausea - which is less useful when both eating and not eating make you nauseated as hell, as happened to me the first, oh, three months or so, but it's a nice thought.

But this ignores the fact that sometimes you're really just legitimately not hungry, and that is okay too! When trying to unlearn disordered eating patterns, it can be incredibly helpful to present food to yourself on a schedule. And even then, it's okay if you're not actually hungry at that time. Eating well isn't about adhering to a strict schedule, or limiting food intake, or restricting in any way, it's about meeting your body's actual needs. Eating a meal every two hours, no ifs ands or buts, is not actually a way to do that.

At this point though, this has become extremely practical for me, because I just cannot fit much food in my stomach. I can be super fucking hungry! And then I take like SIX BITES AND I'M FULL. It's intensely frustrating. If you follow me on Twitter you'll occasionally see me post things like "and for second dinner", because I eat... and then I need to eat again two hours later. It is so frustrating for me right now.

But again, that's me... it's common in pregnancy, especially later on after the uterus has grown significantly, for the pressure this exerts on one's internal organs to make it more difficult to eat. Not guaranteed though. And eating every two hours isn't always the best plan for everyone. Even for me, where this does work pretty well, it varies day by day, as well as by time of day (I tend to be way hungrier in the evening). So again, shocker, PEOPLE ARE INDIVIDUALS. Not that this is reflected in most advice.

Avoid white foods.

This shit alternately makes me laugh and seethe. This was from the same midwife who told me to "only gain 10 pounds". When she said this to me, I nearly blurted out "so... white meat chicken, pork, navy beans, apples, cauliflower... right?" I then thought "so... are you telling me I should be eating the things that in the US we stereotypically associate with Black people? Or I should be eating only Indian food? What?"

I mean it's just a bullshit recommendation on its face.

Usually when you see this what it means is "eat whole wheat bread, not white bread, eat brown rice instead of white rice, avoid potatoes and starchy things" etc. and so on. The rationale is usually OH REFINED FLOUR HAS NO NUTRITIONAL VALUE AND WHOLE GRAINS HAVE FIBER AND MICRONUTRIENTS.

Look.

There is literally no food that has zero nutritional value. I will repeat that. THERE IS LITERALLY NO FOOD THAT HAS NO NUTRITIONAL VALUE.

Literally none.

I mean, did you know you can get 10% of your RDA of iron from a serving of potato chips? And that anemia is ridiculously common in pregnancy, so it's important to get plenty of iron? Seriously. Potato chips have iron in them. Lots of things do. Every single food you could possibly eat has some nutritional value, both in terms of calories (which, you need calories, they are literally units of fuel), and vitamins/minerals. Every. Single. Food.

Additionally, a non-specific recommendation like this to NOT eat foods, to avoid an entire category of foods (even a category as loosely defined as "white foods") can be incredibly dangerous. I've talked about eating disorders and disordered eating before - blanket recommendations to avoid foods can be incredibly triggering for folks in those situations. Additionally, when a recommendation is based not on nutritional needs, but, as I have to figure in this case, the fear of the FAT and the DIABETES, it's not actually helpful, and can in fact be very harmful. Furthermore, the entire idea behind this is based in the notion that some foods are not "real" foods or are "OMG POISON" which... ugh, I don't even have the words for the contempt I have for those ideas. They're straight up diet culture and fat hate. And usually some racism and classism mixed in for good measure.

**********


So yeah. That's what I've heard so far. Mostly a bunch of one-size-fits-all, based-in-diet-culture-and-fat-hate, utter crap.

In the mean time, I'm working on eating when I'm hungry, and satisfying what I'm hungry for. Because I need to eat.

Perfect Pregnant Bellies

[contents: body image, fat hate, racism, ableism, trans hate]

So when I say the words "perfect pregnant belly", what do you think of?

Is it something like this?

Chances are, it is. The epitome of "perfect pregnant belly" belongs to a white woman, relatively small-framed, who looks like she has a basketball for a belly. It has smooth, firm skin, no stretch marks in sight, certainly no extra fat anywhere to be seen. And that's what's in that picture.

When you google "perfect pregnant belly", images like that one are an AWFUL lot of what comes up. There's more variety than I was expecting - some people showing their C-section scars, some with stretch marks, some with henna. I had to scroll some to find someone with dark skin though, and there was only one. All the rest were light skinned. 90% or thereabouts were headless pictures.

What I didn't see were any pregnant bellies that looked like mine.

Sure, I'm a (very pale-skinned, although it's funny how not being "how are you alive" anemic has changed that) white woman. So I saw lots of skin tones like mine, which is typical for media. White and light-skinned folks are way, way over-represented, thanks racism. But I didn't see any fat pregnant bellies in that search. I didn't see any bellies on people who have big thighs like me, and arm fat that hangs below their triceps like me, who had stretch marks on their bellies and breasts long before they were pregnant, like me.

I didn't see any pictures of people who have dark body hair on their arms and legs and lower abdomens like me. I didn't see any pictures of people whose breasts were never "perky" or "firm", but pretty much always looked like a cantaloupe in a sock, like me. I didn't see pictures of pregnant bellies on people who have what their mothers call, not unkindly, "junk in the trunk" like me, with dimpled flesh and back fat and jiggliness all over, like me.

And that's just like me. There's way more things that aren't represented in that "perfect pregnant belly" imagery we get.

That's deliberate.

People will try to tell you that the kind of bodies you see most often represented aren't the result of deliberate choice, that it's all just "how these things work" and nobody is really at fault and it just happens, like the world is a fucking vacuum and culture has no influence on this sort of thing. They're full of shit. The fact that "perfect" is attached to thin white cis able-bodied people with no visible "flaws" is not an accident. It's not an accident in modeling, it's not an accident on tv, it's not an accident in pregnancy. It's not an accident ANYWHERE.

Racism is not an accident. Fat hate is not an accident. Trans hate is not an accident. Ableism is not an accident. What society tells you is "perfect" is not a fucking accident.

And fuck all of that.

Because you know what? My fat pregnant belly IS perfect. It's MINE. There's A FETUS GROWING IN THERE. All of a sudden two weeks ago I saw myself in profile in the mirror and went HOLY SHIT, I LOOK PREGNANT. This is a very wanted pregnancy for me, and that was EXCITING. No, I don't have that "smuggling a basketball look", and I almost certainly never will. But what I DO have, is MY pregnant belly. And MY pregnant belly is fucking perfect.

You know what? If you are pregnant and want to be, and you have a pregnant belly? YOUR PREGNANT BELLY IS PERFECT TOO.

The Day I Was Excited To Have Gained Weight

[contents: fat-hate, weight loss/gain, medical, disordered eating]

You know, and I write that headline as if any other time I gain weight, it's a fucking tragedy, which is just not the case. Interesting to see how much that dominant narrative still sticks with me, though. For the most part with my body, my weight fluctuates and does its thing and that's fine, and I only notice based on how my clothes fit. I was pretty upset the time I gained 50 pounds in under a year, but not so much because of the weight as the fact that my doctor at the time didn't take it seriously. Still, it's unusual for me to have strong feelings about weight changes, so this day kind of stood out, partly for that reason.

ANYWAY. I've mentioned before that I lost quite a bit of weight early in my pregnancy. By "quite a bit", I mean "about 20 pounds in 3 months" a bit. There were a couple of weeks when I lost 3+ pounds, just that week.

Part of it I'm sure is just because I could not eat much my first trimester. I had really bad, constant nausea until not that long ago, so food sounded pretty much terrible all the time. Usually I could get one meal a day in, because my body would finally need food badly enough that I was capable of coming up with one thing that didn't make me want to vomit just thinking about it. This was McDonald's or KFC more often than I can count. I went through a stage where all that tasted good was chicken mcnuggets, fries, and a strawberry banana smoothie. I also went through a stage where all that tasted good was boneless chicken tenders, potato wedges, and biscuits. (Mostly, the theme has been CHICKEN AND POTATOES, PLEASE.)

Clementines have also consistently been delicious for me, so I have had a bag or box of them in the fridge nearly since day 1. I eat two to four of them a day. But clementines and some nuggets are not in fact sufficient calorie intake for the day, even when I'm not pregnant.

Another part of it I'm sure is just genetics. I've been talking to my mom a lot since I got pregnant, and she mentioned that she lost weight in her first trimester with all of her pregnancies. So while apparently my pregnancy has strangely seemed a lot more like my mother-in-law's than my mother's, this probably played a role. Plus, it's common for pregnant fat folk to lose weight anyway in the first trimester. (Well-Rounded Mama talks about that a bit here.)

The biggest factor for me, though, I think, is that I've been losing weight steadily since July, when I finally got appropriate treatment for my hypothyroidism, probably Hashimoto's disease. (I have the antibodies indicative of Hashi's, and it certainly matches my symptoms for the past TWENTY YEARS, I just haven't had the "gold standard" diagnostic done yet.) Turns out when I started taking iron supplements for the severe, nearly "wait how are you ALIVE" iron deficiency I had, I started losing weight. It accelerated when I started taking Vitamin D and B12 (turns out I was pretty "wait how are you ALIVE" deficient in those too). I did not change what I ate, I did not start exercising more (or at all). But suddenly I could fit in to jeans I had last worn just before I got married.

Tell me some more about your "calories in, calories out" theory.

So finally I was at an appointment around 15 weeks, got weighed, and FINALLY, I had gained two pounds. Watching my weight drop and drop through each earlier appointment, I had started to get worried. Part of it was just being up in my feels about changes to my body that were clearly not deliberate or under my control. Part of it really was "okay, at what point do we start worrying here?" Because I was pretty sure that if I'd lost weight again by that point, we would have reached WORRY.

When I saw the midwife, I mentioned that I was in fact really excited to have gained two pounds, FINALLY. Welllllll, she tried to quash that right quick. "You should only gain 10 pounds in your pregnancy." And the look on her face... you could tell that she was really displeased that I was excited. It was definitely "YOU'RE FAT ENOUGH, FATTIE."

I gave her a Look of my own while she blathered on. In order for ANYONE to only gain 10 pounds in pregnancy, they would have to either have a very, VERY small baby, or lose weight through their entire pregnancy. 10+ pound babies run in my family, and bigger people just tend to have bigger babies, so I'd have to continue losing a LOT of weight. Also in pregnancy, the placenta is another couple pounds, amniotic fluid is another couple pounds, your boobs gain a couple of pounds, your body stores some extra fat to prepare for childbirth and nursing, your uterus literally grows, you literally MAKE MORE BLOOD... there's a lot of things that are added to one's body during pregnancy. Even the IOM recommends "11-20" pounds of gain for "all obese [people]" during pregnancy. (warning: there is a LOT of BMI and fat hate and gender essentialist bullshit in that report.)

Plus, this idea of "only gain 10 pounds in pregnancy" is still based in the same "calories in, calories out", "if you just diet and exercise, you can be THIN HEALTHY", as if the functions of our body are completely within our control and if we would just use some WILLPOWER already, all of us fatties could stop being such a blight on society and an offense to people's tastes. There's a lot of research that thoroughly debunks that idea - Fat Nutritionist just posted another article about some of it here - and that idea directly contradicts the lived experience of me and most people I know, yet it persists. The fact that we already know that diets don't work, and weight doesn't usually stay off long-term, is one of the many reasons I know that the "diet and exercise" thing isn't about my health, it's about other people's aesthetics.

I also note that not once did she bring up the idea of disordered eating with me. (In fact, no medical professional ever has, even when I've disclosed that there have been times when I've gone four or five days without eating, and not because I was ill or couldn't keep food down - it was because I deliberately did not eat.) Any time someone loses twenty pounds in three months, that's an instance where you go "hey, let's figure out why, that's a big change." Moreover, eating disorders are incredibly common and incredibly dangerous. That shit can kill you. That shit can end a pregnancy real quick. And a lot of diets are pretty disordered eating. But no mention of it. In fact, she gave me recommendations for foods to avoid - which, if I were as bad off as I've been in the past, would quite easily lead to my going further down the "nope not eating" path.

This post is also long enough without getting in to the dangers of restricting weight gain in pregnancy - or inducing weight loss - but I really recommend you check out Well-Rounded Mama for some thorough write-ups of the problem. In short, restricting weight gain is associated with way worse outcomes than "excessive" weight gain, and what a bullshit term "excessive" is.

So I will not be seeing THAT particular midwife again, thanks for telling me I have to do something that most likely will be dangerous for me and The Kid. And I'm still gaining weight, I think - suddenly my loose jeans aren't as loose anymore HOORAY. So I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing, which is try to eat on the regular, make sure to drink enough water and juice and milk etc., try to take more walks and shit but whatever if I don't I don't (especially given some of the pain I'm already in), and my weight (and The Kid's weight) are going to be what they're going to be.

Mostly I'm just glad that it seems like the extreme weight loss has plateaued. That shit was getting scary.

Things Happening to My Pregnant Ass This Week

[Contents: TMI, medical, eating, mention of weight loss]

While I will be doing much ranting and swearing on this blog, I also just want to talk about what being pregnant is LIKE for me. Some of the things I find most helpful are just people's descriptions of what they are going through with pregnancy. As much as I have and I'm sure will rant about "anecdata", I love hearing people's stories. And in so many cases, it's those stories that make me realize that "I'm not alone." So I want to both document my experiences, and give that to other folks.

Especially since so, so many of these stories are written by not-fat folks. Which doesn't mean they're less valid, just that I already know that their experience is different than mine. And yeah, I'm fat, which doesn't mean every fat person who goes through pregnancy will have the same experience as me, but shit let's get some variety in this piece.

SO. Things this week.

One of the neatest things for me is just feeling where my uterus is. I've been able to find it since, mmmm, around week 13 or so. I used to have to lay on my back to find it. My lower abdomen is normally squishy. I have a floppy layer of fat there, that jiggles and wiggles and yes, squishes pretty easily. I was poking around one night (no lie, because I'd read in one of those pregnancy calendars that The Kid by this point could react to stimuli like pokes, and I wanted to piss them off :D) and was like heeyyyy, that's not squishy. I palpated all around - at this point I had to press pretty hard, but I could feel the firm, rounded edges and was like HEY THAT'S PRETTY NEAT. Then I grabbed The Man's hand so he could feel.

I check on it every so often, especially since I get so many reminders in pregnancy calendars that are like "Oh the top of your uterus is 3" below your belly button!" and so far it's been right on target. This Monday though, was the first time I felt it NOT laying down on my back. I was in the shower, soaping up and all of a sudden it was like WHOA. There it is. Starting right at the bottom of my belly button and spreading out to the sides. It's part of why I mentioned in Monday that it sure seems like the uterus is pushing the fat out of its way, because I could NOT feel this earlier. And I can't feel it while sitting down yet (at least not from the outside), it's really easy to feel while I'm standing up.

The Man also said to me this week, literally, "You kind of look... wider." I laughed and laughed and laughed. It was fricken' adorable.

I'm not a small person, okay? For various reasons, I wound up losing a lot of weight the first three and half months of pregnancy. The most visible way most folks would notice is that my face got really thin - I had slight hollows in my checks, and my bone structure really stood out. My face looked way longer than wide. I noticed my face had filled out and gotten rounder a couple of weeks ago, but I hadn't really noticed anything else. The Man was talking more about my hips and thighs and stuff. Given that his powers of observation when it comes to me are acute as hell, I completely believe him.

The "spread", as it were, also explains why standing up hurts. I'm about 99% sure it's pelvic girdle pain, even without talking to my OB or midwives. It's not in a spot I usually get pain, and it's definitely a perfect fit for the descriptions. It was worst a week ago Monday, after I got groceries, and I'm pretty sure it was exacerbated significantly by the shoes I was wearing. They were a low heel, which is most comfortable for me right now, but they have wood heels and about no padding. So my hips and knees and feet took the shocks of walking. But the clearest way I can describe it was that for a day or two afterwards, my hips felt like they were in the wrong place, and the pain from it, I felt in what sometimes is called the "pelvic saddle", and radiating down my thighs. I also had trouble standing up straight.

It's better this week, although it still aches when I first stand up. It's worse first thing in the morning, after everything has relaxed more. And usually walking for a few steps helps get things back in to place. I also find that a technique I was advised to use for my back helps a lot. My PT told me that your glutes, PC muscles, and abs all do the bulk of the work in stabilizing your spine and pelvis. So I make sure to have all of those tightened a bit when walking - which also improves my posture - and that seems to help a lot. If you read the Wikipedia article on PGP, it mentions that in some cases, yes, the muscles can compensate in whole or in part for pelvic instability, and that's what I'm doing. But shit, it works. The other thing that's helped is better shoes. I bought ones that have low heels, and have way more cushioning and softer soles, so they absorb more shocks. I know those things aren't options for everyone, but I wanted to put them out there in case they're options for others.

Finally, I think I need a timer. It needs to go off about every one to two hours, half an hour before the hunger gets critical and I lose my ability to coherently, calmly think about what I should eat. I am so hungry, y'all. And hungry really, really regularly. Problem is, I can't eat much. Sunday night I made fried chicken, which is one of my most favorite things in the world (it's also one of my sister's, and it was for her birthday). I've also craved chicken and potatoes pretty hard throughout this entire pregnancy. I ate like six bites of chicken, and a dozen fries, and was FULL. It was such bullshit; I was so upset. Then I was hungry an hour later, to my frustration. The hunger is definitely fiercest and most frequent in the afternoon and evening, but yeah, seriously, I need to shove food in my face about every hour to two hours. And I can't eat that much. UGH.

STOP CALLING ME "MOM"

[Contents: gender essentialism, mentions of forced birth and miscarriage]

So I'm 18 weeks pregnant today.

A big part of my learning style is reading. I will devour any book, manual, essay, what-have-you on a subject that interests me. (Makes watching Jeopardy! with me either fun or super fucking annoying.) So because I find pregnancy interesting, and while I have been pregnant before, have never gotten this far before, I have been reading oh-so-many pregnancy books, websites, etc.

They are so. fucking. gender. essentialist.

They are all like "THE EXPECTANT MOTHER" or "HERE'S WHAT'S GOING ON THIS WEEK, MOM" and "MOTHERHOOD" this and "MAMA" that and HOLY SHIT STOP CALLING ME MOM.

First and foremost, "Mother", "Mom", "Mama", "Motherhood", etc. are highly gendered terms. WOMEN are "moms". MEN are "dads". So every time you use one of these (or any related) terms to refer to a pregnant person, you're assuming that person is a woman.

You can't assume that.

There's a reason that unless I'm quoting, I refer to pregnant PEOPLE. That's because the ability to get and stay pregnant is not actually dependent on gender. People of all genders can get pregnant, provided they have a uterus. Used to be you needed ovaries too, but with the state of technology today, you don't even need those. You need a uterus capable of sustaining a pregnancy.  That's it. Doesn't matter what your gender is.

Secondly, while I myself am cis, and call myself "the pregnant lady" on the regular, YOU'RE NOT MY KID, STOP CALLING ME MOM. "Mom" is not and never will be my ACTUAL NAME. Perfect strangers calling me by something that's not my name? I find that profoundly disrespectful. I wouldn't stand for it even from members of my family. Ask me how "being a mom" is going? Sure. "How's it going, Mom?" Fuck you. That's not my name.

Furthermore, it's so reductionist to just refer to pregnant people as "mom" or any of those variants. Even once I have The Kid, and start filling that "parent" role, even if I go by "Mom" to The Kid, that will be but one part of my life and identity. Yes, it's going to be hugely important to me, and almost certainly take up a lot of my time and energy. But I'll also still be Wench, I'll also be my mom's daughter (and have relationships with the rest of my family, etc. and so on), I'll also still be married to The Man, I'll still be a knitter and a sewer and all of the other things I am. Continually referring to me and all the pregnant people reading this stuff as "Mom" just reduces us to that one thing.

Thirdly, the assumption of automatic "motherhood" upon getting pregnant and giving birth is troublesome. Not just because of the gendered nature of the term, although that's a big part of it. But not everyone who gives birth becomes - or wants to become - a "mother". That might be because they're not retaining custody of the person they birth, because they don't identify as a mother, don't want the kid and were forced to give birth... I mean the potential reasons are endless.

It also totally ignores other ways to become a "mom", like adoption. Or, for example, all of the folks in my life that (with their permission), I also refer to as "Mom", in addition to my mother. It's such a narrow definition of what "motherhood" (and by extension, parenting) is. When parenting is so much bigger than that.

I don't have a problem with however folks want to identify. Like I said, I'll likely go by "Mom" to The Kid. (Note: TO THE KID, NOT TO ANYONE ELSE, GOOD LORD.) You're "Mama"? "Hey Lady"? "[first name]"? "Parent?" "Dad?" Whatever? Awesome. But when everything is written with the assumption that "Mom" and variants is how every pregnant person identifies, that's hugely problematic. It erases everyone who doesn't, and doesn't even give a hint to folks that there are other possibilities. It's one-dimensional and reductionist. I don't give a shit about your excuse that "well ALMOST ALL pregnant people are women", I don't give a shit about "WELL WE JUST WANT TO BE CLEAR", you can do better. Stop shoving me in to a box and a narrowly defined and prescribed role.

Shit Fat Pregnant People Get Told: "Fat [people] won't feel their babies move as early as thin people"

[Contains: fat-hate, gender essentialism]

I mean, I am pretty fucking creative at swearing, and I have yet to come up with a profanity-riddled screed that adequately describes the levels of rage, frustration, anger, and disdain this statement engenders in me. (By the way. Well-Rounded Mama covers this particular myth far more kindly and way less-profanity-ridden-ly than I am going to here.)

I started googling "quickening" and "fetal movement" right around week 12 of my pregnancy, because I was pretty sure that fucking weird popping sort of sensation I was feeling was The Kid. I was laying on the floor one night, watching The Man play Assassin's Creed 4, felt this sort of tapping pop-pop-pop down low on the left side, and thought "... the fuck is thAT THE KID WAIT". Especially since it really wasn't like anything I'd felt before. And some sites were okay, but then I would come across things like this (gender essentialist language in this quote):

Most women begin to feel movement somewhere between weeks 18 and 22, though veteran moms tend to feel the baby moving a little sooner than first-timers. Chalk it up to laxer abdominal muscles (there has to be some benefit to those!) or merely the fact that second-timers are more likely to recognize a kick when they feel it. Thinner moms-to-be may also feel movement earlier and more often than those carrying a lot of extra weight, since there's less padding to serve as insulation.

Emphasis mine.

That's not as bad as some I've run across, especially in forums or websites for pregnant folks. There it tends to turn in to "thinner women will feel their babies move sooner than heavier women." The absolute, instead of the "may". (Emphasis mine again... usually.)

To which I reply: BULLLLLLLLLSHIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTT

I know one of the super-fuck-popular fat-hating trends right now in "health" circles is "visceral fat". It's this special SUPER-SCARY fat that YOU CAN'T ALWAYS SEE and it's AROUND YOUR ORGANS and OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG.

Note though, that it's AROUND your organs, not IN THEM. And when you're a pregnant person feeling those first early weird little flutters, you're feeling them from the INSIDE of your uterus. Where there is not a layer of "padding" "insulating" you from the fetus, besides the placenta. (Having an anterior placenta CAN make it harder to feel kicks and movement... but it's not because of fat either.) Your particular fetus is kicking, punching, or just slamming itself in to the inner surface of your uterus, where I assure you, you do have some nerve endings. At 12 weeks pregnant, the fetus is pretty small, so if you don't feel it, that's okay. And it's not because of your weight. It's because it's really small and it might just not have enough force for you to feel it yet. I promise, I PROMISE, that regardless of your weight, regardless of your size, even if your BMI is 40 or above like mine, if you carry a pregnancy to term? YOU WILL FEEL THE FETUS MOVE AT SOME POINT. IT WILL HAPPEN.

Now, if we're talking about, say, your partner or spouse or bestie or whomever being able to feel the kicks and punches from the outside of your belly? There I can buy that fat may play a role... but I also don't think it plays a big one. Turns out my fat at least tends to jiggle and transmit movement pretty well. Also, So once The Kid is capable of generating enough force that The Man can possibly feel it outside, yeah, my fat miiiight mean that it'll be a little harder for him to feel it, and he might not feel the full force at first. But I also have very clear memories of my mom's last pregnancy (I was 12 at the time), and I have virtually the exact same body shape and size as my mom, and we could 100% feel the baby that turned in to my sister kicking with zero problems.

Something I've also noticed as my own pregnancy has progressed, and which gets hinted at in some discussions of diastasis recti and such, is that my uterus is kind of just... pushing things to the sides. Like it's definitely expanding forward, not just upward. So there's just less fat covering it than there was in a few weeks ago. That fat for me, has been pushed to the sides. So I buy the "oh fat padding" argument even less, really. Again, every body is different. My experience is not universal. But given how often I see "remedies" for diastasis recti, I'm betting it's at least pretty common.

I do think that some folks who tell you this mean well. Pregnancy can be incredibly anxiety-provoking, and I know my experience is that I like to know reasons for why things are happening like they are. And "it's just your fat getting in the way" is way more reassuring of a reason for not feeling anything than "something's wrong with the baby", which it can be really easy to default to. But one, it's not true, and two, it plays in to this whole idea of "well fat people don't deserve nice things" that is so incredibly common. Well-Rounded Mama touched on this too - "you get to be pregnant fattie, but you don't get any of the fun stuff like we virtuous thin folks do!" And while I do think that fat folk and not-fat folk experience some parts of pregnancy differently - it's part of why I started this blog - the underlying idea behind this, that all fat people don't get to experience the "fun" parts of pregnancy, or not as much, is just so much bullshit.

Besides which, intent is not fucking magic. (Does anyone know who first came up with this? Because I see it everywhere, but first came across it at Shakesville, and a search is not helping me.) I don't really give a shit if you intend to comfort me by saying "oh it's okay fat people don't feel their babies move as early." It's still wrong, it's still contributing to fat hate, and it's still bullshit. Please talk all you want about how everyone is different, and everyone feels their baby move at different times. That is absolutely true. But stop blaming it on fat.

Pregnancy as a cause of disability

[Contents: ableism, gender essentialism, medical]

So I have a lot of thoughts related to the #solidarityisfortheablebodied tag that I've been watching (and participating in) on the Twittermachine, especially in relation to pregnancy. This will probably turn in to a whole series of posts, but to start with, I wanted to record some of the tweets and talk a bit about how pregnancy can cause disability.

(Just as an FYI, #solidarityisfortheablebodied was started by Neal Carter to talk about ableism. It was inspired by #solidarityisforwhitewomen, which was started by Mikki Kendall to talk about racism in social justice movements, especially feminism. I really recommend checking them both out.)

So while participating in the tag, K Boyd, Cabell Gathman, and I were talking a bit about the intersection of pregnancy, ableism, and disability. Here are some of the highlights:

#solidarityisfortheablebodied when pregnancy cn only be "inconvenient," never disabling. Pregnant ppl even ashamed to name it to themselves.
— Cabell Gathman (@cabell) November 16, 2013

"@cabell: #solidarityisfortheablebodied when pregnancy cn only be "inconvenient" never disabling. Pregnant ppl even ashamed to name it to themselves."

@kingdomofwench and just btw, I do become physically disabled when pregnant. :/
— K Boyd (@MendyLady) November 16, 2013

"@MendyLady: @kingdomofwench and just btw, I do become physically disabled when pregnant. :/"

MT @MendyLady: @me Many people do not, and so it's awful that society assumes they do. But then for those of us who do, it's ...
— Wench (@kingdomofwench) November 16, 2013

"@kingdomofwench: MT @MendyLady @me Many people do not, and so it's awful that society assumes they do. But then for those of us who do, it's..."

@kingdomofwench miserable to get our condition taken seriously. #solidarityisfortheablebodied
— K Boyd (@MendyLady) November 16, 2013

"@MendyLady: miserable to get our condition taken seriously. #solidarityisfortheablebodied"

One of the things that continues to strike me about pregnancy is this overwhelming assumption of it and framing of the experience that it is the best, most fulfilling thing that a woman [sic] can ever do. That you will feel SO WONDERFUL in your second trimester, even if you felt horrid in your first trimester! It's fine! It's all great! (Don't believe me? Start looking at pretty much any pregnancy book or website out there.) And while the sites and books will talk about "round ligament pain", and "sore feet", and "mood swings", and while they'll often go in to detail about all of the things that can go wrong with the pregnancy, like placental abruption, they don't generally talk about how pregnancy can really be disabling.

The exception to that seems to be pelvic girdle pain, which is mentioned specifically both as "common" and "potentially debilitating". The Wikipedia article is way better (even if it does assume that all pregnant people are women). It's more detailed as to symptoms, potential effects, and way more thorough in terms of what treatment is available. "What To Expect" - which, I seem to recall hearing that this was so detailed it was too detailed about pregnancy and that's why no one liked it - has scant information, and scant options. And beyond that first mention of "debilitating", doesn't really go in to much else.

But PGP is far, FAR from the only change in pregnancy that can disable someone. Some of the easier ones to figure on are things like the loosening and spreading of your joints causing foot pain, or the lower back pain that can also be very common in pregnancy. Even in those cases though, the response often is "well get new shoes", "it's not that bad", "if you exercise more it will feel better". And yeah, foot pain and joint pain doesn't sound so bad. Until you have it, like I do, and when I went grocery shopping last Monday I could barely make it out of the store, hunched over the cart, unable to carry my groceries in, and having to slowly, painfully lurch my way up the stairs to my apartment, and immediately lay down. If you'd like to inform me that that's not disability, that that kind of pain isn't disabling, you can fuck right off. CAN'T. GET. MY. OWN. GROCERIES.

Then there's the nausea and vomiting, and the extreme nausea and vomiting known as hyperemesis gravidarum. HG can get people hospitalized. They literally cannot keep anything down, and are so dehydrated they usually wind up getting IV fluids and nutrients. It's incredibly dangerous both for the pregnant person and the embryo/fetus they're carrying. And even milder forms of "morning sickness" can be disabling. It's hard to function if you can't eat, if common smells make you ill, if you just feel like shit all the damn time with no relief.

Pregnancy doesn't just affect you physically though. There are so many mental and emotional changes that happen. Those often get dismissed as "hormones". And while hormones may be the cause, they're not always. Even if the cause is hormones, that doesn't make the effects any less real. Plus, any sort of mental health issue is incredibly stigmatized, and especially in women, tends to get pooh-poohed. "You're just lazy", "oh take a deep breath", "it's all in your head". Well that's fine and dandy (asshole), but when you're so ill you can't get out of the house, can't get out of bed? When you're afraid to move because WHAT IF IT HURTS THE BABY, and a part of you knows that's not really rational and it's the disease talking, but you still can't move? All the deep-breathing in the world ain't gonna fix that, and to suggest that it's such an easy fix, and that it's not disabling, is incredibly shitty.

And like was quoted above, lots of people do NOT experience debilitating, disabling side effects during pregnancy (and the ones I mentioned above are an extremely abbreviated list, mostly drawn from my own experience). That is genuinely awesome for them. My problem is when that becomes the only acceptable narrative for pregnancy, as it often seems to be. Again, the narrative we're presented about pregnancy so often is along the lines of "it's the most fulfilling, wonderful thing you can do!" and that completely erases people for whom it is emphatically not (such as myself!). It's one thing if you want to say "I found pregnancy amazingly fulfilling" or "I felt wonderful during my pregnancy", but to describe pregnancy in general as those things is bullshit. The kindest thing I can say about being pregnant is that it's incredibly uncomfortable and undignified, and part of the reason I use that phrasing is because if I tell it how it really is, I have gotten people jumping down my throat about how WELL JUST DO THIS and YOU'RE TERRIBLE and OH IT'S NOT THAT BAD etc. and so on. Many people are sympathetic - but that's also a function of the fact that I largely surround myself with people who aren't shitheads.

Which brings me to another point: I've gotten to the point, even this "early" in my pregnancy, a few times where I have significant trouble standing upright or walking. And even I hesitate to call that "disabled". I can't get groceries on my own, I have to plan dinners so that if I cook something that involves more than five minutes of effort one day, the next day I have to have something that only requires five minutes of effort, I'm back to doing PT exercises for my fucked up back and hips, I hate hate HATE that I have to pee all the time because goddammit I just got comfortable and standing up is going to hurt, and I dread the possibility of The Kid laying on my spine as they get bigger and aggravating my degenerated disks. And this is all shit that started after I got pregnant.

There's incredible stigma against disability, being disabled, and identifying as disabled here in the US. Being a pregnant person on top of that? There should be a really elegant math metaphor here, but I'll settle for "it way more than doubles the bullshit and stigma".