April 6th, 2011

Do you guys remember the story of the fat bridesmaid who was going to be excluded from a wedding since she would “ruin the pictures”? Dear Prudence dealt with a similar question in Monday’s column.

Q. I Need Help: I submitted a question last week and so I am hoping to get lucky today. I am 52 and getting married in about six months (first), my best friend, whom I love dearly, is assuming I want her to be my matron of honor. I have not asked her because she weighs about 400 pounds. I hate myself for not wanting her to be in the wedding, because it would just break her heart. People stare at her and point as she is very short, so it looks worse (if we can say that). I feel awful, but I am just being honest. How can I handle this?

She’s my best friend! And I love her! Except not really! Here’s Prudence’s answer:

A: Since you’re just being honest, I’ll be honest, too. I find your sentiments repulsive. How sad that your best friend has a best friend who actually is one of those people who would mock and stigmatize her. It’s one thing if you conclude, “Hey, I’m 52, so I’m a little old for matrons of honor and all that frou-frou.” It’s another if you want to exclude her because she’d ruin your wedding photos. If you’re coming to me for a polite way to tell your friend she looks appalling, you’ve come to the wrong place.

Posted by mo pie

Filed under: Fatism, Tidbit | 28 Comments »

March 11th, 2011

I’ve really been wanting to post something non-pregnancy related, and go through the links in my inbox, but it’s still a little chaotic around here! I’m freelancing part time, teaching full time, and moving into our new house. So a lot is going on, and I thank you for your patience while I get things sorted out. In the meantime, I’m going to stuff a few topics into this post that I’ve wanted to talk about.

Gestational Diabetes

I had my one-hour glucose test a few weeks ago. (I am… wait, I can’t be 31 weeks today… can I? Well, it was at week 26.) In the days leading up to the test, I was convinced that I was likely to fail it. (A lot of people fail the one-hour test even if they don’t end up with gestational diabetes.) Why was I so convinced? I guess I assumed that since I’m fat, I would probably end up having gestational diabetes. I am also very thirsty all the time and drink water constantly, which is a normal pregnancy symptom, but again, I jumped to the diabetes conclusion. And finally, I’ve been eating way more sugar than usual since I’ve been pregnant. I crave carbs of all kinds: fruits, breads, chocolate, donuts, pop tarts.

[As an aside, I used to envision that I would be a beatific model of healthy eating when I was pregnant. But I'm here to tell you, physically speaking, pregnancy sucks, and you do what you have to do to get through it. I spent a lot of time so nauseous that only a specific, limited number of foods appealed to me at all. A lot of my healthy staples (notably turkey sandwiches and tuna fish) are on the Do Not Eat or Eat More Rarely list. And most importantly, it's a tossup as to what I can stomach at any given moment. It's actually been very liberating, because if someone sees me eating a donut or whatever, whereas I might have gotten slightly defensive about it in the past, these days it's like eff you, I'm pregnant, I can do what I want. It's been the key to helping me really let go of food guilt. I haven't felt guilty about food for months.]

Anyway, I’m sure you can see where this is going: I passed the one-hour glucose test, no problem. And then I felt really dumb for all my dumb assumptions. Of course, if I had developed gestational diabetes, would I have blamed genetics, or blamed myself? Clearly, I should have read this first. The bottom line is that there is an increased risk for gestational diabetes in obese mothers, but the overall risk is still fairly low.

Weight Loss In Pregnancy

The next pregnancy hurdle was my last OB appointment, where I discovered I’d lost 10 pounds between appointments. In fact, so far at seven+ months of pregnancy, I’m down 15 pounds from my pre-pregnancy weight. My doctor did some measurements and was very reassuring, but sent me for an ultrasound just to double check. At the ultrasound, we discovered that the baby is measuring right on schedule and is in fact in the 50th percentile for weight. Exactly, perfectly average and normal and lovely. So as long as I keep taking my prenatal vitamin and eating a varied diet (yes, I swear there are veggies and protein in there) things seem to be on the right track. Yay and yay!

Baby Bump Question

Even though I’m 31 (???!?) weeks pregnant, I don’t have an obvious baby bump. I mean I do have a bigger stomach and am waddling around, but the average person on the street is unlikely to assume that I’m pregnant, and certainly nobody has asked about or commented on it. I had to announce my pregnancy to my classes at the beginning of the semester, since I didn’t want them to awkwardly wonder all semester if I was pregnant. Many of my thinner friends have obvious little baby bumps; I just have a general westward expansion.

This has actually saved me from one thing, which is people touching my stomach. I wasn’t big on people touching my stomach before I got pregnant, and I’m certainly no more enthusiastic about it now. But this weekend I’m going to a couple of baby showers with people who know I’m pregnant and may want to touch my stomach. I really don’t want them to; in fact, I was up last night worrying about handsy relatives or my over-enthusiastic parents, and how to set appropriate boundaries with crazy Dutch people.