I feel fat!

Yes, I said it. I feel fat! Well I know, I know...I'm not fat, I'm pregnant....but that still doesn't stop myself from feeling like I'm just getting bigger and bigger. And today's doctor's appointment didn't help any. Well, I guess it kind of did help in a way...but....well you be the judge.

So, I get in the examination room and in comes the doctor (a cute 15minutes later....I hate waiting). He asks me the usual round of embarassing questions: "Any nipple discoloration?" "What color is your pee?" "Are you having regular bowel movements?" ya know....the usual...then he says, "Okay, lay back, its time to give the belly a feel, see how things are going."
Now, this part normally doesn't bother me too much because its not as invasive as the pelvic exam. All this part entails is you laying back on the table, unbuttoning your pants or pulling them down just a bit and the doctor just pushes lightly on your stomach to see how it is developing and to determine the placement of the baby.

Well, I lay back and I forgot to unbutton my pants. The doc says, "Whoops. You have to unbotton those for me first." So I do and of course the first thing he notices is the line imprinted on my stomach from the slight tightness of the jeans (skinny jeans) I was wearing. So he says, "Yep. Its now time for you to go get yourself some maternity pants." He pushed on my stomach a bit and then I could feel that the baby has now moved up a bit higher than my pelvis and the band of my pants was tight and digging in a bit to right where the belly is now forming. I immediately thought (and said out loud) "Oh no! Am I getting that fat already?" But this is why I say, maybe the appointment helped a bit, because the good ole doc said,

" You're not getting fat, you're getting more pregnant. Its perfectly natural. Most women will start to show a bit by the 3rd month and you're only 2 weeks away. You are just showing a bit early, and thats also normal for different women. I know you women get all bent out of shape when you have to relent and buy the pregnant pants, but the thing is, they are necessary. Its not good to have that pressure on the stomach from pants that are too tight."

I sat there and thought....okay...he's right. He also went on to say that I could buy the "Belly Band" which is a piece of cloth that goes over your unbuttoned pants so that the zipper can't be seen and that will allow you to wear your regular pants longer, he also said I could just use the old fashion trick of using a rubber band on the button of my jeans or a hair band.

After hearing all of this, I realized the man was right. I need to suck it up and start wearing the proper pregnancy clothes. Sometimes its difficult for me to come to this understanding because its a hard thing to swallow that I'm not like the "tiny girls" .....as much as I would like to be. For better or worse, I am my mother's daughter. I'm pretty tall, wider built with broad shoulders, and wide set hips, and a "bubble butt" (or ghetto booty as I like to call it haha). I am a woman who gains weight easily, and I'm a woman who shows her pregnant belly very early on. I'm not the tiny girl who can wear her regular jeans throughout her entire pregnancy. Nope, thats not me. I am me, and I need to learn to just accept that.

What goes along with this "I feel fat" feeling is this unshakeable feeling that I'm going to find myself back in the same weight gain situation I was in when I was pregnant with my first child. I don't know why, but there's this voice in the back of my head kind of saying that I'm going to get huge again no matter what I do. Now, I know that I'm doing everything I can in order to NOT let that happen: I'm working out, drinking my water, eating healthy foods, etc; but this voice is unrelenting and its just constantly causing this nagging feeling that again, I will fail and I'll have another 2 years of hard weight loss work ahead of me just to get back to pre-pregnancy weight.

This voice? I believe its the voice of self doubt and negativity. Its the voice that I've tried so hard to overcome for a while now. Its a voice that I thought I had stifled when I was getting down to my lower weight, but now that I see the scale creep up and up at each doctor's visit, that voice has come back with a vengance.

I'm guessing that the only thing I can do is more of the same. Keep working out as much as I'm comfortable with, keep eating healthier foods and cut out fast foods (which I have had a bit of lately....thats not good), and keep drinking my water. With all three of those things, I should be able to keep my weight gain to a minimum. My goal for my next doctor's appointment (which is set for May 4th, about a month away) is to be either the same weight, or slightly less. Maybe 5lbs less if I can swing it? We'll see. Lucky for me, the doctor said again today that losing weight (5-10lbs) is perfectly fine for me to do at this stage of the pregnancy. So, thats where my new goals are.