"Fat + ZOMGBABY"? What's up with that?
Hi, my name is Wench. I'm fat. And I'm pregnant. ZOMGBABY comes from Twitter, where I have been tweeting about my pregnant/having a kid life under the hashtag #zomgbaby. Once I realized that a blog would be helpful for some of the long-form stuff that works approximately not at all on Twitter, really, what else would I name it.
I plan on writing about the bad research I find on the internet, the horribleness of most pregnancy sites, where to find pregnancy clothes if you're fat, what's going on with my being pregnant/The Kid, health conditions, etc. Basically kind of the intersection of fat acceptance and pregnancy, because while there are some blogs that talk about it, look, most pregnancy-related stuff out there is NOT EVEN REMOTELY WRITTEN WITH PEOPLE LIKE ME IN MIND.
When's your due date?
April 23, 2014
What's the gender of the baby?
Well, one, we won't know until The Kid is old enough to tell us their gender on their own. (And you know gender isn't a binary, right?) At best, prenatal ultrasounds can give us a guess as to the sex of the baby, although that's not a simple binary either (as MendyLady has often reminded me and others on the Twittermachine). Two, I just kind of don't care. So long as it's a human and not a velociraptor, I figure we win.
Wait... a velociraptor?
Did you know that all chordates (animals with spines) go through the same embryonic stages of development? There's a very slim but non-zero chance that with enough genetic flim-flammery in my uterus, I could be growing a velociraptor in there.
What's with the [Contents:] notes on every post?
I try to give people a heads up as to what sort of topics I'm going to discuss in a post. That way people can figure out for themselves if they're up for reading it or not.
But you're not fat! Don't be so mean to yourself!
Look. Without writing an entire dissertation on the connotations "fat" has in modern US society(which has already been talked about most excellently by other folks such as Kate Harding, Melissa McEwan, and Ragen Chastain), and without going in to why BMI is an utterly flawed statistic (see here, to start, although dig back in my Twitter TL and you'll see more), motherfucker my BMI was 40 before I got pregnant. That means people like many doctors and the CDC consider me "morbidly obese". For various reasons, I really despise that descriptor, so yeah, hi, I'm a fat lady.
But don't you know fat is bad for you?
I'm just going to link here.
But don't you know being fat while pregnant is dangerous?
Welllllll, about that. (For more, including direct links to the next few parts in that series, go here.)
But YOUR FAT WILL KILL YOUR BABY!!11!1eleventy
About that too. Also it's pretty funny how my mom and grandmas on both sides were and are fat, and yet I'm here. Huh.
What's this HAES thing you mention?
Health at Every Size. Basically, your size doesn't determine your health, and no matter what your size, encouraging things like joyful movement (whatever that looks like for you) and healthy eating (whatever that looks like for you) result in way better outcomes than shit like diets.
Why did you delete my comment?
Probably because it contained one or more of the following:
- racism
- fat-hate
- diet talk
- sexism
- trans* hate
- homophobia
- ableism
- threats
- other asshattedness
Wow you swear a lot. Haven't you considered--
Yes, I do, and no, I don't give a fuck.
BUT THE RESEARCH SHOWS
Maybe one day I'll do a few tutorials on how to read research papers. Suffice it to say, what you read in a newspaper article about a research paper often has no connection to what's in said paper, and that lots of research is actually really, deeply flawed. Oh wait, one more thing - scientists have bias too.
Also, seen any of this research?
You should try this! You have to do this or you won't feel good!
Yes, I realize that I talk a lot about my health conditions on this blog and on Twitter. I'm not totally dead-set against unsolicited advice. I am dead-set against advice that does not come in "I-language". So please. Feel free to talk about "I experienced this", and "Something I tried that really helped me was". Refrain from "oh you have to do this". Telling me what to do is rude at best, and I really don't take orders well.
Why are you so mean? I JUST CARE ABOUT YOUR HEALTH
I'm mean because I know that the "about your health" thing is a lie. I'm mean because we're all taught that ladies should never enforce boundaries, ever, so when one does we wind up shocked and horrified. Also, even before I got pregnant, I was The Fuckularity. In other words, not only did I have no fucks to give, I stole other peoples'. Now that I'm pregnant? MY POWERS HAVE ONLY INCREASED. It's okay if we're not friends.
