My age – 29
4 pregnancies, 2 early miscarriages, 1 birth, currently pregnant
Oldest son is nearly 6, currently 29 weeks pregnant
Last entry here.
I came a long way since my last submission to SOAM. Back then, I was overweight (around 75kg), pretty miserable, still caught in the throes of Post Natal Depression. In the three years after that submission, I ended my relationship with my sons father, I met the love of my life who I married, and I finally lost the baby weight. In the end, it wasn’t diet and exercise that did it – I tried that. I’d exercise 5 times a week and count every calorie that went into my mouth, and I wouldn’t lose a gram. In the end it was pure starvation that did it. The constant compliments helped, the “you’re wasting away”s and “you look great”s drove me to eat less and less. I’d never felt so thin, or so good. Eventually, my eating returned to normal, and my weight fortunately stabilised at 58kg (I’m 5’3”), I felt I’d won the battle.
I had never thought I would have another baby. After giving birth to a screamer who never slept, developing the PND that nearly killed us both, and never expecting to meet anyone let alone someone who was father material, I’d all but ruled it out. When my husband came along, everything changed. He is a wonderful man, selfless and considerate, the best step father I could have ever hoped for for my son, the best husband I ever could have asked for. We started TTC in May 2010, and got our BFP in July.
Within weeks, I’d already gained back most of what I’d lost. At 29 weeks pregnant, I have gained more than 20kg over my lowest weight, tipping the scales at 79kg. I look in the mirror, and I am repulsed by what I see. In what is meant to be a wonderful time, I am resentful. Resentful of the baby who is causing this weight gain, resentful of myself for not being able to control it, resentful of my husband for wanting to have a baby in the first place. This baby moves inside me and I want to scream at it. Every time I step on the scale and see I have gained, it leaves me devastated. I walk around 20km a week as we don’t have a car, I drink 2 litres of water a day, I have an active lifestyle. I don’t eat huge meals or binge, I eat well made home cooked meals, fresh fruits and veges and whole grains. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this. This baby and pregnancy feel like a punishment rather than something to be celebrated.
Every other woman out there seems to be gaining normal amounts, the worst part is reading women on internet forums complaining they haven’t gained a thing. I seem to be the only one who is struggling. My pregnant friends are positively svelte compared to me. Every pregnant woman I pass on the street looks like she stepped out of a magazine. I’m beyond devastated by how things have turned out, and my biggest worry is that this baby will be born and won’t be worth it. I’ll get another screamer. Another baby I will resent. More PND. My heart says “it’s pregnancy! enjoy it! love yourself!” but with every weigh in my mind says no, and every thing I put it my mouth fills me with guilt. Every kick pushes me deeper into resentment.
Photos – after meeting my husband but before getting pregnant; 28 weeks pregnant
There are a few things I want to say here:
1. Your pregnant body looks so beautiful! Your belly is perfectly round, and you do not look like you are carrying any extra fat.
2. Even if you are carrying extra fat…WHO CARES?!?! You are beautiful. Your baby will be beautiful. You husband thinks/knows you are beautiful. Your baby and older son will know you are beautiful. Those are the 3 people that matter most.
3. I hope you seek help now, before your son is born. I gained a lot of weight with my kids (about 60 pounds with each)…but every kick made it worth it! I looked forward to feeling the life inside of me move. You are eating healthy, staying active, and creating life at the same time…give yourself a break. The weight will come off with time…right now it is your baby that matters (and your older son).
4. I know it is hard to gain the weight. To feel like no matter what you do, you are going to get “fat”…but it is worth it! I lost my 1st baby (he passed away when he was 19 months old). That is worse than anything you (by “you” I mean everyone in the world) can ever experience…worse than gaining some weight. He left me covered in stretch marks…stretch marks that I now rub while I am crying…he left them for me. They are my proof he existed. My house could catch fire today, and I could lose every picture, every video, every piece of his clothing…but I will always have these marks. My 2nd baby boy left me some marks as well…and I can tell which are from him and which are from his brother…they are special!
Enjoy this…there are so many worse things in life. Plus…you look amazing :)
Can you get PND while you’re pregnant? I think you should talk to your MD. In my eyes you are beautiful and I hope you are able to bond with you LO.
I agree with the above poster. It is clear from your posting that you are dealing with some very seriously skewed perception of both yourself and your pregnancy. You look beautiful, but that is not the point for you is it? You are feeling resentment towards a baby who literally feels nothing but love for you. Even when they are screaming, and lord knows it can make you want to escape. (After my son was born, a friend said validated a sobbing phone call by saying “Isn’t it crazy to love something so much, and want to throw it out the window at the same time?”) But it seems like you are having a very hard time reeling back in your feelings and appreciating the baby for what he is… a baby. When they cry, that is their only emotional outlet. You have to dig deep in yourself (AND THROW IN SOME EAR PLUGS!!) and comfort him through his tears.
But all this advice really isn’t what you need – you need to see a professional to work out whatever is so deeply rooted in your heart and mind that is preventing you from managing your feelings in a functional way and a way that will allow you to enjoy your life.
I also want to add that I think a lot of women feel overwhelming disappointment with motherhood because we are “supposed” to experience it as a source of pride and ego strength – it is supposed to be our ultimate vocation. But that isn’t true for me or a lot of women I know. I adore my son, I adore being his mother, but when I didn’t have other areas of my life I could work on and be proud of I was extremely, extremely depressed. I literally cried at the same time every day, uncontrollably. Without other areas to be proud of we can get obsessive over meaningless things like weight or food or cleanliness. Once I went back to school (at night, finishing law school) my mental health stabilized and I was able to effectively exercise too. From the outsider perspective, people said they couldn’t imagine mothering all day and doing grad school at night … and I couldn’t have imagined doing it until I was in it. But having those hours away, having small successes of just having understood an assignment, helped me get perspective and deal with my life. I am certainly not recommending taking on as huge of a responsibility as grad school but even joining a recreational sports team or some other hobby that can be JUST YOURS and something you can see progress in.
I rarely say this, but I will hold you and your children in my prayers. I truly hope you are able to see how blessed you are and how blessed your life is and enjoy that completely loving little boy who is coming into your arms.
Like the others, I encourage you to seek counseling/get help regarding your self-concept and the resentment you are harboring. It is not good for you or the baby growing inside of you. Tell yourself and live by truth, not lies.
I was so sad to read this, and I really don’t want to offend you, but it may be that you need some help! Because we are seeing two different things, I see an absolutely GORGEOUS pregnant body and I can’t imagine feeling that way to my own unborn child.
Pregnancy is such an precious time, and our unborn children are innocent and just as precious… no matter what consequences our bodies face, whether it is morning sickness, weight gain, stretch marks, sagging, etc. The fact that you are feeling so differently is a big red flag! Please seek some counselling because your well being is EVERYTHING to your children! Children are such a wonderful addition and blessing to our lives and you deserve to see it that way too!
I hope for the best outcome for you and your family, we all have our struggles, some we talk about and some we don’t… but you are never alone in this journey called Motherhood and you are allowed to show weakness and ask for help.
You are so beautiful, I have never known such beauty as a mother’s body.
And Alexis… I thank you for your post too, everything you said hit home for me and I am so thankful for any form of support I can find…! This motherhood journey has been so unexpectedly difficult and amazing all at once.
It sounds like this pregnancy is bringing back buried memories of the nightmare you lived through with your firstborn. Of course, when you started trying to conceive, it had been six years since you had your son. You felt ready to do this, and wanted to be able to give your new husband another child. But the pregnancy symptoms just triggered a tidal wave of fear and bad memories and now you are, understandably, just plain terrified and pissed off. Here’s my advise, for whatever it’s worth: 1. If you haven’t already, talk to your husband about your true feelings surrounding this pregnancy/baby. Secrets seem to make everything worse. 2. Know that this time around really might be different. You’re in a different place. The outcome may not be the same. 3. Set up a plan, hopefully with your husband, in case the outcome is eerily similar. Have some ideas set up ahead of time to help you make it out in one piece. Sometimes, just knowing there’s a plan of action for getting out of a messy situation is freeing. Perhaps you have a doctor you can see to get you a prescription, or maybe there’s somewhere you can go for a few days to get away. Anyway, I hope it all goes well. You and this baby deserve a good start together. Oh, and by the way, your pregnant belly is SO cute and you look really beautiful.
Ditto to the above posters. You are beautiful. Your pregnant body–nourishing your baby–is beautiful. Your pregnant self seems physically healthy by description and by picture.
I feel for you, I truly do. I have suffered from Post partum deppression with both my pregnancy’s and yes I do carry some resentment towards them with how my body reacted to pregnancy and yet I couldn’t imagine my life with out them :) You look beautiful, you honestly do, and I know how hard it is to take a compliment but I hope you learn sooner than later because coming from experience that it just brings you down further. I wish now more than ever that I loved myself as a little girl and as a teenager then now might not be so hard. I suggest therapy and some good girls nights!! I hope you learn to love yourself before your precious babe is born, and hope to one day practice what I preach,lol
I just want to add to the above posters and say I don’t think you’re seeing what’s really there. Your pregnant body doesn’t seem to have a drop of fat anywhere. It is truly beautiful…not in the ‘all pregnant women are beautiful’ way, but in a way that I’d wished I’d looked when I was pregnant. Whatever you’re doing physically seems to be right on. I agree that you should seek help and I really like the idea of having a plan in place for the possibility of PND. It sounds like you’re building up anxiety over it in anticipation. Having a plan might help alleviate some of that fear knowing you’re ready for it. Good luck, beautiful mama.
Sweetheart, you look beautiful.
Every woman’s pregnancy is different. Remember, weight isn’t a permanent thing! You can always lose it. Right now, your body is focusing on growing a beautiful little baby, but after he is born you will have your body back again, and a lot more freedom.
I will admit that I wasn’t one of those women who enjoyed pregnancy. I didn’t feel beautiful at all. It was 9months of feeling fat and ugly, and I hated every second of it.
You will get back to your old self.
PND is devastatingly difficult… I am suffering from it at the moment, and sometimes it feels that there is no end. You know that you have a predisposition to it, so hopefully you can set up some extra supports while you’re still pregnant. Perhaps ask a family member to come stay with you and hubby in the early days/months?
This too shall pass. You’re over half way now… it might seem like an eternity, but it isn’t. Just think! There will come a time when your body is back to being your own, and you will have two beautiful children to show for it.
Even if the early days of motherhood are difficult, it WILL get easier. I promise… at the depths of PND, I thought my world was ending… but now that my son is a few months old, I am slowly beginning to crawl out again.
Don’t lose hope, sweetie. You look beautiful.
xoxo
P.S. Ignore what those stupid forums say. I gained a tonne of weight during my pregnancy and spent the entire time beating myself up for having gained more weight than everyone else… I ate healthily and exercised, but apparently my body just decided I needed those extra resources! You might be the same.
I am back to my old size now… as hard as it might be while you’re in the place you’re at now- you can and WILL get back to your old self. Just relax and try to think about it all in context… of all the many, many years you will live… this is only a very small portion of your life, and you will come out the other end :)
Much love, <3 xoxo
I completely agree with what “mrspetunia” said. You know that you are getting yourself into the same troubling headspace that you went through with your first, but now you have a great advantage: you went through it before and saw how much it damaged your health and threatened your life and your baby’s. Get these discussions out NOW, get registered with a therapist, and have all the tools you can to be prepared for your ante- and post-natal depression.
I’ve found that the scariest thing about depression is that it’s irrational. It’s not like a phobia or anxiety where you can gradually expose yourself to more of it and discuss it to make it less severe. It actually messes with your mind so that you cannot see reality. That’s dangerous because no one can talk you down from it. Weekly therapy and possible meds are absolutely necessary. You’ve already mentioned suicide once. Be smart about this.
Best of luck!
You are beautiful! I love, love, love your tattoos!!! Enjoy your pregnancy and your soon to be gorgeous baby!
seriously GET HELP NOW. You should be talking to a friend or therapist about these thoughts because it sounds as if you are already depressed…I had postpartum depression and I felt similar to you. please get help for your childrens sake because its not fair to yourself or your family to feel like this.
you have a gorgeous body btw I see nothing wrong with it at all! its a fact that you gain weight while pregnant
Love, I agree that you need to seek a professional to help you overcome the resentment you feel. I also absolutely and whole heartedly agree that your body is beautiful. And even more than beautiful, it is Divine. Enjoy it, Love!
I’m 33 weeks now and things are slightly better. I hit rock bottom, I told my husband how I felt, I got the guys to ask him to call the midwife and tell her I was severely depressed.
She told me she could refer me for help but that the referral process took too long and unless I was at the stage of wanting to kill myself, there was no point.
I started taking iron for anemia and started to sleep longer and have more energy – enough to realize those problems I have are always going to be there whenever I am at a low ebb. And that I need to deal with them.
I’ve never really dealt with my fear of having another baby like my first. Of how I lost the first 4 years to PND and resentment. And I’ve not dealt with my poor body image ever. The body image that stops me going into clothes shops because there are mirrors. Or my mother and grandmothers utter disappointment in me producing a second boy instead of the girl they wanted.
I know I need to, I just need to figure out how.
You are not fat at all! I agree you need to get some help. I am VERY concerned with the way you so easily seemed to type that your PPD nearly killed you and your child both, really upsets me. It is not fair to your baby that you feel this way and you should take this very seriously. I have suffered PPD but I got over it and told myself, “MY GOD ELISSA, how blessed you are to have this baby, how badly did you beg God to give you children when you tried for years and finally He gave them to you.” When I get down about sleep I tell myself, it will not be long that this little face is so tiny and sweet, these lips will pucker this way, these hands will be so tiny. Life comes and goes so quickly, it is important not to stress over such silly things. Your belly will go and you are very thin…YOU have power over your mind and I know that for a fact. I have a 2 year old and a 4 month old…After my second was born we found out he was not term he was a slight premie and delt with some issues he outgrew, I was recovering from a C-section, happened to get mono (very badly) which I still have 3 months later, had a sister while I was preggo have to have brain surgery because her breast cancer mastasized to her brain and the tumors were growing…Then after he was born had yet ANOTHER sister have a rare, agressive cancer in her sinuses that caused them to take out her eye and all her bone around her eye (unable to ever have a fake one put in because they had to take too much tissue and bone)…They sliced through her face, left scars and a gaping hole where her eye and bone should be…All this while I had 6 periods in 6 weeks and a kidney infection…This increased my PPD but nothing is greater than my own thoughts and my own mind. NOTHING IS GREATER than who I trust and I trust in God…If you do not then you need to trust in yourself and those around you…Be thankful your body can carry a child, be thankful you have eyes, breasts, arms, legs, limbs…Be thankful for life, for every single breath…Remind yourself these things pass, one day they will grow and you will wish you enjoyed these things instead of being so resentful of them. All these little ones want is love, and they are entitled to it…Please for your children and husband get help, this is so heartbreaking to me.
It is hard I know, after all I have been through for someone to say to me they just can’t do it they can. It helps 10 fold when you have someone to talk to that will understand you…Someone who supports you and getting enough sleep can help a lot also…My PPD was never scary and I never resented my children, it was severe anxiety, wanting to just walk away…But it was not anything to do with walking away from them, I wanted to walk away from everything because it seemed life hurt so badly…Everyone was getting sick around me and I was obsessing over the “what ifs” I was worried about every sickness and illness…Panicing that I was going to get cancer, my husband, MY CHILDREN had something wrong with them…It hits people differently be strong and you should tell the world because it helps…I don’t care how they look at me, they get to know because it helped me a lot and helped me get over it easier. Good luck, you look wonderful!
your belly is sooo cute :)
Have you had the baby yet? I seriously hope you were able to speak with a counselor! I had slight PPD and felt SO guilty that I acted that way after I was able to overcome it. I think it is inexcusable of your mother and grandmother to heap disappointment onto you for having another boy! He is a blessing!!! Oh, I also hope you went to a vision specialist (joke). I NEVER, EVER looked as great or as thin as YOU do in these pics when I was pregnant! OK, OK, we all look “great” because we’re mothers-to-be, but still. You look fantastic! Sounds like you stay active and eat healthy foods. Getting stressed after baby’s birth? Go for a run or work out to let off some steam! I hope and pray that eveything works out for you. Keep us posted!
And I thought I was the only one who felt that way?!!!!!
Let me tell you, you are NOT alone. I HATED every second of each of my 3 pregnancies, I actually hate that word. To me in the picture you looked pretty god, but I know that isn’t what you see. The anger that I had to try to keep inside. I felt like my blood was boiling every day. I too exercised all the time… It dose not matter if you aren’t naturally skinny before let’s face it you’re screwed.
Anyway. I pretty much got over it. And the only way I can say how is that I thank god every day I do not have a child inside of me! I hope you have a baby now and give yourself a year at least to get back to normal!!!!!
I wanted kids forever and miscarried several times, my son 13 mths was suposted to be a twin and he is the only surviror. You would think I would love being pregnant. NOPE… I love my son dearly NOW,I loved him while I was pregnant, but I did not like waddling, or not breathing right, and I did hate that my time/activities were restricted. It’s ok to feel that way. It is ok to express it. I was checked for post partum several times but I did not fit the mold. I now have a screamer (the one who will not let you sleep.) I love him all the time, but yes I resent not getting sleep. We are human as well as mommies and neither us nor the baby is perfect. But we will muddle along. Hugs.