Baby Fat

Something unexpected happened to me when I found out I was pregnant. I became really hungry. Not just regular run of the mill hungry, I mean like, chew your arm off hungry. Eat an entire gallon of ice cream hungry. Knock people down and push my way to the front of the Taco Bell line hungry. You get the point. I found myself famished at all times. I wanted to (and did) eat everything in sight. I figured since I was eating for two, an extra serving of mashed potatoes or 8 more slices of pizza wouldn't really hurt anything. I was very emotional about food too. I would throw toddler style tantrums and find myself crying my eyes out if I couldn't have food in my mouth at the very moment my stomach decided it was time to eat. I once even hallucinated that Rob was drinking whiskey at 10 in the morning because I hadn't eaten breakfast yet. Turned out that ominous whiskey bottle I saw sitting on the counter was ketchup he had set out to go with the hash browns he was cooking me. He never made me wait for breakfast that late again.

By the end of my pregnancy, a funny thing had happened. I had managed to pile on 65 pounds in the 30 weeks since I had found out I was pregnant. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that eating all that mess is going to make you fat, but I must say, I was quite surprised when I stepped on the scale at the hospital the day I delivered and put up a big 195. I was equally disappointed that Will didn't come out weighing 25 pounds, because his mere 7 pounds and 4 ounces meant that the weight attached to my body was all me. This hateful nurse at my OBs office had been warning me that this was going to happen. She lectured me about gaining too much and about how it was going to make it so much harder to get off once the baby comes along. She even wrote down my weight gain in my chart with red pen at one of my visits to signify something along the lines of an "F" for nutrition and willpower. I wouldn't listen though. I ate more just to spite her.

Let's see a visual demonstration of what can happen after too many cheeseburgers, Milky Ways and extra cheese pizzas.

Pre-pregnancy Leslie

Leslie 3 days post pregnancy
Yowers! Not only do I look as though I may eat that sweet baby I'm holding, but you will also note that my boob post pregnancy is about the same size of my head pre-pregnancy. And that was a day before my milk really came in. My body was an animal I no longer recognized.

So I've decided, if I become pregnant again, the way to remedy my excessive eating is to stick this picture of me with the two chins and ginormous boobs on the fridge. Every time I go to grab an extra pudding cup, I'll remember how hard I had to work to get all this weight off and go for an apple instead. I'll think about the early morning treadmill runs and my trainer yelling, "No breaks, push through the pain!" I realize that gaining weight is a natural and necessary part of any pregnancy, but the way in which I packed on the pounds was far from healthy. The weight I gained got me disapproving looks by the evil nurse and red marks on my medical records. I'm determined next time around, to stick to weight gain that only requires blue pen.

Leslie