Feeling fat; Feeling bad.

I spent last night at an after-hours Doctor’s surgery, attached to a drip.

Thanks to a combination of a migraine, morning sickness and some kind of gastro-bug I hadn’t eaten for a couple of days and had become close friends with the Great Porcelain God. Not good at the best of times, but a real problem when you’re a third of the way through a twin pregnancy. By the time midnight came about I’d had enough and was willing to give them the arm and leg they asked for, just for someone to take it all away. They didn’t do much other than weigh me (not sure what for) and put me on a drip to replace fluids. But it was the weighing that was the worst; I came in at about 11 kilos over my ‘usual’ fluctuating weight.

Now, I knew just by how my clothes (no longer) fit that I’d put on a bit at the beginning of this pregnancy (the opposite to what happened last time, and what I understand is more ‘usual’ for plus size preggos, where they lose in the first trimester). In fact, it was this early unexplained weight gain that made me suspect twins again. And perhaps I reacted badly because I was dehydrated and feeling awful but… man, those numbers depressed me badly.

Suddenly I’m scared. it’s not about being ‘thin and pretty’ anymore; now I’m worrying about how I will carry this pregnancy, what it will do to my body and whether I will recover at all later. I began to face what some people I know keep telling me; that once this is over, and the babies born, I *need* to lose weight.

And for the first time in a while I could feel myself agreeing.

I know, I know, it goes against everything FA stands for. And right now I’m still feeling confused. Part of me says I should be able to healthy no matter how big I get. Another part reminds me how little energy I have, how much knees  and back hurt, and asks how carrying ‘extra’ weight cannot affect that? One part says ‘diets don’t work’ and the other says ‘even losing 20 kilos will help; you won’t be thin but you will feel better’. And I think, if I can put on this much weight will not eating an awful lot, think of how bigger I’m going to get over the next few years…

I worry. I hate feeling ill; I hate feeling bad. I’m sick and tired of not being able to find clothes (especially maternity: NZ suppliers top out at [NZ] size 20 and overseas ones have shipping costs that double the original cost of the garment).

On the other hand, though, I’m not about to go crazy, like an infomercial I saw while in the waiting room last night. It was for some kind of dance/exercise video. I quite liked it, until they got to the testimonial part; where people who were originally a (US) size *10* had now become a size 4 or 6. Why bother??? Was all I could think.

Fatties, fatties, everywhere!

I don’t know if it’s because it’s summertime, or perhaps because there’s just a month ’till Christmas… but yesterday at the mall I saw something I haven’t seen before.

Other fatties.

Not the inbetweenies, not the ‘conventionally overweight’, but people of *my* size. Usually I’m the only one, or there may be one more. Which is very few, especially when you consider the suburb I live in has a fairly big Pacific Island population.

It was nice to see I’m not alone. I’m used to being the largest person in the room, shop, building, street. I used to agonise over it, now I ignore it, but I’m always aware of it. It felt odd to not be the odd (wo)man out.

 

Skin deep? Bone deep? Or FAT deep?

I really should stay away from parenting messageboards.

Trouble is, I get too evangelical. Someone posts something negative about their weight and there I am, the Adipose Avenger, waxing lyrical about FA. Trying to get the truth out, trying to reassure them that they’re normal, I’m normal, we’re all normal. But the level of vindictiveness out there! Boy… it gets hard to take sometimes. Not so much because of the insults – hell, I’ve had trolls here tell me they hope my babies will die inside me – but the whole *sheep mindedness* of it gets me! Does no-one *think* anymore? Did any of these people go to Uni, or Polytech? Did any of them do a class that involved even an iota of critical thinking?? I doubt it… they swallow the crap they’re told and cling to it like the last life raft off the Titanic. One woman even told me I was being irresponsible getting pregnant while fat; *she* would have lost weight first, to give her child every chance in life. Keeping aside the whole idea that diets don’t work and pregnancies aren’t always planned, there is also the idea that being fat will somehow harm my baby. Um… how? Birth defects, I was told. And besides, fat women have fat babies, don’tcherknow. Ahhh…. ok, well the first is rubbish and as for the second, well, perhaps that’s genetics in action? How would losing weight (and it would be temporary, because – all together now – diets don’t work) affect that? Besides, wasn’t there a study/theory years ago that proposed to opposite? All I can say is that my Mother began her gestational years skinny and ended up plump, while her babies (as adults) have gone the other way… the children born when she was hardly eating are obese adults, the ones born later when she was bigger and ate a fair bit are slim. Co-incidence? Perhaps. But it makes me wonder…

And there’s the thing that annoys me about all this; these people *don’t* wonder. They read the fat-fearing sound bite and absorb it to regurgitate at a later date, on and on, until they drop. They don’t think, they don’t look critically at it, they just accept it. Deeply.

I don’t propose to have all the answers. But I do balance what I read with what my common sense tells me, with what I’ve seen in my own life, and make my own conclusions. I don’t fool myself that I’m *right* but I do take pride in thinking. Isn’t that what the brain is for?

The real problem

So here I am; pregnant with twins and seeing a midwife who advised me not to put any weight on during my pregnancy (although to be fair that was before she found out there were twins; her advice after that was “take a multivitamin”. I’m still having morning sickness so a day I can eat well is a bonus… dieting isn’t even on my radar).

I’ve been thinking it over (brooding? who, me?) and I think the worst part of it isn’t what she’s advised me to do, but that I now can’t trust anything else she says. Sure, some of it is common sense – eat a good amount of protein, for example – but other parts… well, I lack the medical knowledge to know if I should be worried or not. And that’s the part of the real price of fat prejudice in medical professionals. Not only are we often given bad advice but we lose our trust in the profession altogether, and that’s not good.

Take my blood sugar levels, for example. My non-fasting glucose level was well within the normal range (and interestingly enough, lower than it had been a month before when I’d had bloods done for an unrelated issue). But she was worried about something called the HbA1c, which apparently measures one’s blood sugar level over time. It is within normal, and way below the level that diabetics are recommended to maintain, but she was still concerned and said that pregnancy should have lowered it further and because it hadn’t I was obviously going to develop gestational diabetes. Now, I don’t think I believe her. Looking on Google I see my level is within normal and I can’t find any indication that pregnancy should lower it. But that’s just the rub; I can’t find anything to either prove or disprove her theory. Normally, I would be worried… but her obvious prejudice about weight leads me to suspect her and everything she says.

And that’s the problem with medical professionals who see fat as a health problem. We can’t trust you. And it’s a strong woman who won’t worry when she’s pregnant…

For what it’s worth I’ve decided to not stress over this issue. She’s given me a form to have a fasting glucose test done when my morning sickness is over, and I will wait till then until I begin to worry.

Two by two

Just to make things even more fun; I went for a scan today and found out I am having a second set of twins.

So dieting is *definately* off the menu!

Pregnant? Great! Just don’t gain weight

My midwife is an idiot.

Yeah, I know that sounds a bit strong, and OK, she is a professional, a very nice lady, and gave me some good advice to boot. But stuck in amongst it was an obsession with my blood sugar levels (which had tested *normal* btw) and my size.

Bugger.

I was hoping that I would be able to avoid all the fat prejudice bullcrap this time but it was not to be. She offered to refer me to a dietician not once but twice. I refused both times of course – honestly, I’ve done enough diets and read enough diet-related crud in my life that I’m pretty sure I could give them a run for their money. But then she pulled out the big guns and asked me my weight. I told her, as far as I know (haven’t weighed myself in over a year, but have been relatively steady until I got pregnant) and she replied that I really should aim to put on no more weight during my pregnancy. She said she wasn’t sure how to achieve that, but people she’d spoken to suggested the way to go was to eat well but just a little bit less than normal.

I mean, what the hell?? The developing fetus (or fetuses, have to have the scan to find out) needs nutrition. What it can’t/doesn’t get from my bloodstream and what I’ve ingested it will ’steal’ from my body. And pregnancy weight gain is pretty much all baby and other body stuff (like extra blood, etc) it’s not usually fat. And even if it was… isn’t this the time to be nurturing my body, not depriving it? It’s building another person in there!

And the real kicker? She said this to me, even though I’m only 8 weeks along. Hell, I’m still in the throes of morning sickness and here I am being told to diet. Unbelievable.  I didn’t say too much in response – I woke up this morning sans my voice, so talking was difficult anyway! – but I did let her know I was happy with the way I was currently eating.

But there is no point in changing her; we have plans to move to another city in a few months and so I will probably only see her once or maybe twice before I shift and have to find a new midwife anyway. But in the meantime, boy she will have a fight on her hands if she brings up the issue of diet again!

And man – I’m disappointed.

A professional, or a ‘professional’

I’ve got my first meeting/appointment with my midwife tomorrow and I’m nervous. (Just as a quick explanation; under the NZ medical system maternity care is free – you pick a ‘lead carer’ who can be a GP, obstetrician, or a midwife. Due to shortages we pretty much all end up with midwives; obstetricians are set aside for difficult cases and few GP’s do maternity anymore. Technically you have the right to chose and shop around for your carer or LMC but again shortages mean you usually end up being ‘assigned’ to whoever has a space. With all this in mind I’ve chosen a midwifery collective within walking distance, and I’ve been assigned to D, whom I’ll meet tomorrow).

I’m also nervous every time I move town and have to get a new GP, for the same reason; I have no idea how this medical professional will respond to me and my super-fatness. I worry that they’ll look down on me, and I worry that they won’t treat me as effectively as they would do a thin patient. I’m especially nervous this time around because my own preferred way of doing things (hospital birth, pain relief, and possibly not breastfeeding) is very much against the ethos and ‘norm’ of current maternity practice. If I add being fat to being a heretic then I may well be damned… and I don’t want that. Yes, this isn’t my first pregnancy but I still need support, y’know?

Am I the only fatty who takes a deep breath before she or he enters that office, ready to find out if their medical practitioner is a professional… or a ‘professional’?

Feeling ‘normal’

I’m new to fat acceptance (and blogging!). Like most of us, I wish I’d heard of it years earlier. And I hope I’m not alone in finding it a bit of a struggle.

I’m stuck a bit in the whole ‘fantasy of being thin’ thing. And I keep thinking back to when I was thinner (but still fat) and wishing I could just get back there, I would feel/be so much better than I am now. It’s silly, of course – I felt just as bad, if not worse, about myself back then – but it doesn’t stop me thinking of it from time to time. In my day to day life I try to deal with my size (and my perception of it, which of course is the real problem here) by simply ignoring it. After all I am lucky enough to be relatively active and mobile; I simply train myself to forget that I am the biggest person in the street/shop/mall.

But that doesn’t strike me as a good idea either. So I’m trying a new tactic: I’m going to list the positive experiences I have had with my body size. Incidents where either I felt good about my body or where my body was simply… accepted. One that comes to mind was a class at Uni where, as an aside, a tutor asked us to email her our interpretations of a particular slang term; the winner would receive a t-shirt from an upmarket brand who’s PR person had spoken to the class earlier in the week. The t-shirt was a size M (medium) and far too small for me. But come the next class I found out I’d won; and the t-shirt my tutor handed me was the correct size (XL). She’d just contacted that brand and made a swap, no fuss – no muss. At the time I couldn’t understand why I felt so good about it, but now I am older and wiser. She knew the t-shirt was too small and so had matter of factly made sure she had one that would fit. It was a small gesture but the fact it was done (and done quietly) made me feel… normal (after all, of one of the male students had won she probably would have had to change it also).

And then there was the funny incident when I was pregnant the first time around. I went into the insurance agent’s office to change our address as we were moving to my hometown to be closer to family. The girl behind the counter was young, say in her late teens or early twenties. She was perfectly groomed, beautifully made up, and soooooooo friendly. She made eye contact when she spoke to me, joked about our destination (my hometown is not a byword for fun and excitement!) and was throughly pleasant and cheerful.

And then she put her foot in it. She asked why we were moving. I said Oh, I’m expecting twins in a couple of months and I want to be closer to my family. Her response was priceless and it still makes me giggle, almost 5 years later:

“Really? Wow! Congratulations! And I thought you were just fa…”

The look of complete horror on her face was wonderful She slammed her mouth shut as her brain caught up with her but it wasn’t quite fast enough. She apologised profusely but I was laughing as I left. I still laugh about it now. Because she didn’t mean it as an insult, it was just an observation – along the same lines as “Wow! You mean those curls are natural? I thought you’d had a perm!” Poor kid

And lets not forget pregnancy. I’m still stuck in morning sickness-land so I’m not feeling particularly wonderful about it at the moment! But last time I felt a real rush – here was my body, that I’d always thought of as a waste of space, a horrible container for my mind and essence, and it wasn’t awful at all… it was creating two little people, with no help or direction from me. This was something *my body* was doing, all by itself, and it felt miraculous. And wonderful. For the first time I felt my body was *good* for something. Useful. It had a point!

So I’m still not there, as far as accepting myself goes. But thinking about the good stuff helps. And I hope to get there – one day.

Fat kills babies!!

Ok, I am little more forgiving than most because I used to be a journalist and I am well aware that only the top few have the privilege to both write what they want and have it printed without being heavily edited. I remember when the foreshore hikoi was at it’s height (2004) and the national networks and press outlets were all full of the Pakeha side of the story. I was lucky enough to gain an interview with the Maori movers and shakers behind the hikoi. I wrote my stories – several of them – giving the Maori point of view. They played locally because I was a one-woman newsroom and had carte blanche control over what we broadcast (within reason). I sent the stories to the national feed as well, as per usual practice. But they were ignored in favour of more Pakeha slanted coverage. This isn’t a stand out incident, either – just a fairly common occurence in newsrooms across the country.

But even so, one would hope that personal pride would prevent a so called professional ‘journalist’ from writing a story like this (although, of course, there is every chance they *didn’t*, and it’s been edited this way). It’s titled Obesity normal say women and gave me a mental vision of a bunch of chained-up fatties shouting FA slogans and chanting about the usefulness of HAES  :)

Unfortunately the content isn’t as funny.

Apparently a Brisbane study (oh dear, Aussie madness!) of just over 400 pregnant women has concluded that the poor dears are so deluded that they now view obesity as normal. Apparently 30% of them – like me! – were either overweight or obese before they became pregnant and when queried about their weight 36% said it was ‘normal’. Here’s the first couple of slip ups by the journalist; was that 36% part of the 30% fatty group, or were they 36% of the entire study? And secondly – what exactly where they asked; whether their weight was ‘normal in society’s eyes’ or ‘normal for *them*’. These missing facts make it impossible to make much sense of the story, which includes the usual ‘fat makes getting pregnant and pregnancy hard’ bullshit which is trotted out for each and every physical malady known to (wo)man.

I’m going to skip over the entire BMI is bullshit argument (I sort of assume you’ve heard it, if you haven’t, try googling The BMI Project) as a starter, and get to what really pissed me off – this quote which I shall bold in all it’s farcial glory:

“Dr Callaway said the research highlighted the importance of doctors calculating the BMI of patients and advising them of the increased risk that extra weight would pose to a developing baby.”

Let’s get this straight; your weight *does not* pose a risk to your developing baby. I am soooooo extremely angry that a so-called professional would say that, and another report and disseminate that, without a shred of proof. I am sure there are other obese women out there who are pregnant and perhaps a little scared (natural, especially if it’s your first) and reading this will do wonders for their stress levels – and hey, stress *does* seem to affect the unborn fetus. But who cares, so long as we can shame the fatties for breeding in the first fucking place??

I will repeat it: your weight *does not* pose a risk to your developing baby. There have been no studies even vaguely suggesting this is so. If you are obese before you get pregnant you do have a slightly higher risk of developing gestational diabetes or toxemia but there are several risk factors for these conditions, including multiple births.

It’s bad enough that this bullshit is put put there by so-called professionals who should know better. It’s bad enough that others repeat this information. But a key part of being a journalist is sorting through the dross thrown at you to find the nugget of truth; peeling back the spin and revealing the actuality. This journalist has failed to do that, despite having several chances within the story to do so. And they’ve scared the hell out of a bunch of people in the process.

Not just a fail, but dereliction of duty.

Right!

I’m going on a journey – and I’d like you to come with me

I’m looking for maternity clothes – or failing that, clothes that I can wear through (and hopefully beyond) my current pregnancy.

The problem I face is a serious lack of supply, coupled with a fairly serious lack of money. There are no New Zealand retailers selling maternity clothing above a size 18-20. There are few New Zealand plus size retailers selling above a size 24 and those who do are usually very expensive. At the moment I wear a NZ size 24 or so on my top half (I was already well endowed and no doubt will continue to be so, as the pregnancy progresses) and thanks to the leftover belly from last gestation (twin sprogs) approximately a size 28 or so on the bottom half.

I’ve seen so many posts from Americans in the Fat-O-Sphere bemoaning the offerings of t-shirts, jeans and track suit pants that seem to be the staples of so may of their plus size stores. Guys, don’t knock it; I would be *thrilled* to be offered the same but most of your shops don’t ship overseas and the ones that do usually charge fairly hefty shipping costs.

Over the next few weeks (once I get my final assignment in for the Uni paper I’m taking) I will be investigating the options available to me, to clothe myself as I gestate this fetus (still hoping it’s just one in there).

Wish me luck!