Whale Rider

Read an article on MSN recently in which the male health editor had been persuaded to wear a pregnancy-simulating bump weighing 28 pounds (about 13 kilos) for 24 hours, with predictable results (back-ache, intense self-pity, sudden respect for pregnant women). The whole thing struck me as a little bit pointless, as to go from nothing to that amount of additional weight immediately would be hard for anyone to cope with, whereas the creeping up of the scales over time gives you a chance to make some gradual adjustment. However, it did make me think, as 28 pounds is pretty much the weight I have put on so far, and I still have two months to go. Last time I put on a horrific 56 pounds in total, and could feel my skeleton creaking in alarm every time I got up in the morning. By the time I was at term I was lugging about the equivalent of not only my backpack that I travelled around the world with for a whole year, but D's as well. My feet ached permanently and I felt indescribably ugly and ungainly. Already I am feeling unnaturally swollen and uncomfortable. It's not the same as simply being overweight, as beer-bellied males seem to think. That huge bump isn't squashable flab that can be compressed when the urge to cut your toenails strikes - it's rock hard and unnegotiable.

So as mentioned before, I am trying not quite to get into such a state this time around. And if I only put on a pound or so a week for the next couple of months then things should in theory be much easier afterwards. I still think it's rather unfair that some pregnant women swan bloomingly around in pregnancy with a tidy little soccer-ball bump and shiny hair, while others like me look as if we've eaten all the pies in Australia. There's no mystery to the weight gain and unfortunately it's not just 'all fluid' as people kindly suggest. The truth is that I just find the constant hunger extremely difficult to deal with (other than by binge-eating, of course, which works perfectly), and so am coping only by using every last reserve of my willpower in not putting chocolate or biscuits into the supermarket trolley. It's so hard. I am trying to focus on my trip back to the UK in September, when Baby2 will be twelve weeks old and I would love to be wearing normal - ha!- clothes for the Christening. I reckon that baby plus placenta plus fluid must equal about 6 kilos or 13 pounds, so that'll leave me with about 9 kilos to go before I begin to look reasonable again. It might be do-able. Hmmm.