Baby bulge
by
Lebby Eyres
uploaded: 08-05-2006
As regular bint readers will know, this site is a diet-free zone. But rather than moan about the proliferation of diets in our glossy sisters, we choose instead to occupy our minds with the many hundreds of things on this planet more interesting than reading lists of boring food that we’re supposed to eat to make ourselves thin.
But I’m afraid that two things going on in the world right now mean that I can no longer restrain myself from putting fingernail to keyboard on this subject. One, I’m pregnant. Two, I’m sick to the back teeth of reading about celebrities losing their “baby weight” in double quick time. My fury reached a zenith when I stepped into the ante-natal clinic recently and picked up a magazine, Mum Plus One, (more about the word “mum” another day…) and was confronted with the coverline, “How to lose your baby weight safely”.
I do realise that at least the intentions of this piece were good – to encourage women not to go on Rachel Flintoff-esque crash diets the moment they’ve dropped their sprog, but to exercise instead. Unfortunately the underlying message of the article was exactly the same as all the other post-baby diet features out there – “Forget about the baby. What the fuck are you going to do about all that spare flesh, you lazy bitch? Isn’t it time you got yourself down to the gym/out of the fridge? Look at Rachel/Gwyneth/Katie – don’t they look marvellous?”
In recent months, due to the glut of celebrity babies at the moment, the obsession surrounding this particular subject has reached fever pitch. This is partly due to the fact that celebs know that the mags will pay them a hefty wodge of wonga for the obligatory “How I lost my baby weight in one day” feature , but also because of the ongoing and widely held belief that all women turn into enormous heffalumps during the duration of their pregnancy.
It’s not just the media who think this. Colleagues and friends keep congratulating me for “not putting on any weight” despite being seven months pregnant. Aside from the fact I obviously have put on weight (there is a baby in there, after all), the point is, I am actually supposed to put on some weight, too. But I’m not quite sure why everyone expects me to suddenly double in size.
I know a fair few women who’ve had babies, and they all look exactly the same afterwards as they did before. No doubt with clothes off there might be a couple of stretch marks or the odd spare tyre, but generally speaking the same. And if they are a few pounds heavier, then so what? Pregnancy is no time to diet, and nor is the first six months of being a mother, however great Rachel Flintoff might look in a bikini.
Looking at evidence from the celeb world, I’d say that it’s women who already have a problem with their relationship to food who carry it over into pregnancy. If you starve yourself on a daily basis and then use pregnancy as an excuse to eat all the food you’ve ever denied yourself all your life, then you probably are setting yourself up for a few post-partum body issues. If on the other hand, you just eat a normal healthy-ish diet, with the requisite extra second helpings and mid-afternoon slice of chocolate cake on top, then what happens to your body during and after your pregnancy will, inevitably, be down to nature, not to diet.
The fact is, some women just snap back into shape after giving birth, others develop a more womanly form, some get stretch marks, others get skinnier, some get droopy boobs and others get blue bulgy veins running the length of their legs. And there’s really no point comparing ourselves to people who have the money to buy cleverly tailored clothes, nannies, personal trainers and daily massages. Instead, can’t we just give ourselves a break, for once?
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