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Coming to terms with your new pregnancy body.

Pregnancy is a crazy time for your body. It’s basically like puberty all over again, but in a 9 month block. Other than obvious physical changes (cue big belly and tender boobs), you also get some weird side effects of all of the hormones coursing their way through your body. With my pregnancy I have been lucky; the side effects haven’t impacted me that much. Other than a snotty and bloody nose that lasted for 9 months straight, and a bit of nausea at the start, I got off pretty lucky compared to some other women. There are countless articles out there outlining the changes your body goes through during pregnancy. Yes you need to pee a lot, yes you’re tired. But this article isn’t about what happens to your body physically. This is all about how you emotionally deal with the changes to your body image- something that I have not had to deal with for a long time. Your body images changes along with your physical changes, and no one talks about it. So I have decided to shed light on some of the ways you might feel, and how to deal with those feelings on top of all the other things we feel during pregnancy!

Right off the bat I will tell you that at this stage (33 weeks pregnant) I love the way my body looks. Honestly. The reason I love it is not because “I’m making life” and its “magical and beautiful” even though it is. The reason I love it is because its so freaking WEIRD. It humours me to look in the mirror and see myself as this strange figure. Maybe its because I could never see picture myself as pregnant. But I tell you now, I did not feel like this the whole way through my pregnancy. There were a lot of times where I felt so judged by my body by others, which made me feel horrible about myself. Some of you will relate, and some might not, but hopefully this can give you some insight and relatability to the issue surround pregnancy and body image issues.

People make comments

It never ceases to amaze me how people think that just because you’re pregnant they can make comments about your body. They would never usually make comments about your body shape or size (if they are polite) but for some reason, growing a HUMAN FREAKING BEING means that they can make as many unsolicited remarks about your size and weight. And of course we have heard them all.

“Are you sure you’re not having twins??”

“Wow! You’ve really popped haven’t you?”

“Can you not see your feet yet?”

“You’re much bigger than for how far along you should be”

All pregnant women know the following statement I am going to say, but I am going to say it anyway for anyone who might not know: EACH PREGNANCY IS DIFFERENT FOR DIFFERENT WOMEN! You cannot (I Repeat CANNOT) control how your body reacts to pregnancy, and each woman’s body will react differently. Most often women comment on how their multiple pregnancies have differed from each other - no two pregnancies are the same.

It can be really hard to block these comments out, especially if you hear them a lot or multiple times a day. The thing I tried to remember was this: these people are jerks. If they feel the need to comment on your body, then fuck them. Look at yourself in the mirror, and find something about your new body that you find amusing. Not pretty. Amusing. I have chosen that word specifically. It can be really hard to focus on a positive when you are surrounded by negativity. So instead of trying to find something that makes you feel “pretty” or “beautiful” find something that makes you chuckle about yourself. For me it was my belly button- it’s gone so tiny! It’s like a little mouse’s belly button. Each week I kept playing with it like a little mouth and gave it voices. That would give me a little giggle, while I also mentally stabbed all the people who said rude things about my body.

There’s a weird time where people don’t know if you’re fat or preggers

While the comments above are external factors, I feel that this one is an internal factor. There was a long stretch of time during trimester 2 where I kept thinking, “are people going to think I’m pregnant? Or will they just think I look fatter than usual?” This was especially true because my pregnancy has been during the Covid 19 outbreak, so I was in isolation. What do we do in iso? We eat everything in the cupboard! So when I went back to work, a common thought I had was “are people going to think I just got Iso-fat?”

This is a hard one to overcome, because it is you telling yourself this. You can tell someone to piss off if they’ve made a rude comment to you, but you can't tell yourself to piss off as successfully. The best thing I can tell you is that this stage will pass. There will come a time where you will definitely look preggers. And you know what, if you don’t get to that stage, who the hell cares? You have another body inside your body, of course you are going to look different. The thing I found that helped me was realising that me thinking this was really just another form of fat shaming (who gives a shit if I look “fat”?? There’s nothing wrong with that) and to enjoy wearing the clothes I love while I still can.

It still fits! It still fits!

Speaking of clothes, this is the stage of denial. So many pretty clothes, so hard to find something that fits. This was one of the harder things for me to overcome. It can be very frustrating to want to wear something and you can’t now due to your growing stomach. My style is a way that I identify myself, and taking that away from me because my clothes didn’t fit anymore was hard. I felt like I was losing part of my identity, not to mention it was now taking me much longer to get dressed in the morning in order to find something that was functional, comfortable, that fit and was cute. Also maternity clothing is SO EXPENSIVE! At the end of the day remember that your cute clothes will always be there for you once your bub is born. And if at the end of THAT day you don’t end up being able to fit into those clothes again, they were excellent generals in their time of duty, and now its time for them to retire. Buying yourself a piece of clothing you’ve always wanted is also a nice push-present to yourself once your baby is born to. Once baby arrives I will be schlepping around in leggings and a hoodie (which is perfectly fine), but I know I have my “coming home outfit” (yes, they’re not just for babies!) ready to go to if I need a boost to my moral.

Pinterest is NO HELP

The Pinterest algorithm suggest a lot of things to you. Some of them good, some of them not so good. Once I found out I was pregnant, I obviously made a new baby board and started pinning like mad. But as my search for pins continued, I kept coming across similar articles.

“How to have a ‘belly only’ pregnancy”

“My diet for a ‘belly only’ pregnancy”

“How to loose the weight FAST post partum”

“How I lost the weight 4 weeks post-partum”

Not to mention all the ads for programs like Noom. These not-so-subconscious messages are very good at subtly watering you down in the self-image department. It makes you wonder “should I be having a ‘belly only’ pregnancy? How long is it going to take me to lose the weight, other women can seem to do it so fast. Hmmm, maybe I shouldn’t be eating this, its going to make the weight harder to shift when the baby comes.”

Newsflash: pregnant women need to gain weight during pregnancy. It is NOT HEALTHY to have a “belly only” pregnancy. Listen to your doctor, not the internet.

Not to mention, Pinterest also has a lot of articles along the lines of increasing milk supply, getting baby to sleep for 12 hours during the night at 4 weeks old, and things people wish they had done in their trimesters. These articles might be helpful, but they also subconsciously put a lot of pressure on you to try and achieve them. Like I’ve said before, each body is different and you cannot rely on a Pinterest article to be you guide to post-partum weight loss. It’s basically Web MD in a different form. You go on it and when you’re done you’re convinced you have cancer: not good.

My best advice? Limit your time on Pinterest if you are feeling down about your self-image. Yes Pinterest is fun and there might be so many other things on there that you want to add your board, but at the end of the day, it’s doing more damage than good. Head back onto it when you’re in a happier headspace.

That being said, I still love you Pinterest.

Yeah, I know that my body will “never look the same” thanks for bringing that up

Fuck off anyone who says this. My body made a HUMAN BEING, the fuck has your body done other than eat doughnuts? Yeah, your body will “never look the same again”, you know what, it will never look the same again anyway because we are aging every day. So why not embrace the fact that your body was able to make neurons and electrons and thoughts and dreams and feelings. Tell those people who say this to go fuck themselves. Why do they care if your body looks the same or not? Are they going to be inspecting it?

There is so much pressure for pregnant women to “bounce back” after they’ve had their baby or babies. Why? Why does society feel the NEED to put this pressure on pregnant women? We have just gone through what will most likely be one of the most physically tortuous events of our lives and have brought an amazing little person into the world, but if we don’t get back to the way we were (god forbid women take up too much space in the world!) then you have FAILED at pregnancy. Not to mention if you bounce back too quickly. A friend of mine has just had her gorgeous baby girl, and she has received countless comments about how she’s TOO thin, and that he bounced back TOO soon. You cannot control what your body does, it just does its thing and you have to let it. You have more important things to worry about, like your new child. Your body may bounce back to what it was, it may not, but either way, you are amazing, and you are more than a number on a clothes tag.

Let me know in the comments below your experience with dealing with self-image while being pregnant. Have you had a similar experience to me? What have people said to you? I hope this article has been able to both be informative and entertaining for you. You rock mumma!

Love, The Feminist Mum

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Thanks for checking out The Feminist Mum- an all Aussie, all Feminist blog about a first time mumma trying to figure out the whole pregnancy and motherhood thing. Click below to find out more about me. 

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