Due Date

Today is September 15; that means my baby is due in exactly 7 months.  Granted, I'm not looking at April 15 as my "have baby or bust" date...due dates are merely a doctor/parent attempt to gain some control over a pretty uncontrollable situation.  Still, it's a good ballpark to have.

I think April is a nice time to have a baby.  It feels mammalian...having my baby in the spring so it has the whole summer and fall to grow and survive it's first winter.  Like a squirrel.

Plus an April baby means a first Halloween at 6 months (think of the adorable costumes!) and a first Christmas at 9 months (Christmas outfits and all sorts of crawling around under the tree!).

It's probably very un-parentlike of me, but I'm really looking forward to when my baby does more than sleep, eat, cry and poop.  You know, around the 3 month mark when he can smile and bounce around a little and not look like a wrinkly potato you scrubbed too hard in hot water.

I like babies as a rule.  But everything I've seen of newborns, they appear pretty nonreactive.  And teeny.  I'm looking forward to a baby with a little more oomph to him.

I can't tell if I'm showing or if I'm just fat.  Or bloated or some other symptom of pregnancy women don't mention as they float, Virgin Mary-like, through their term.  I have a belly and my pants don't fit.  But with a baby only an inch long, how much of that is him?  Not much.  I guess I'm just fat.

Someday the first trimester will be over and I will be able to eat the food I want without throwing it up and spend half an hour listening to my music on a treadmill without fainting dead away.  Maybe then I'll feel less beefy and more babyish.

Body Issues

I am a woman: therefore, I used to be a girl and therefore I have body issues.  As I contemplate future parenting, I wonder if there is any way to prevent my daughter(s) from developing similar issues.  I've come to the conclusion there probably isn't, but hopefully I can secure their confidence levels so they can get over said issues quicker than I did.

Last post I told you about my weight and how I’ve dealt with it over the years.  My other body issues range from skin color to hair color to everything in between.

I grew up in a very urban area, a major city in Massachusetts.  The high school I attended is in a rough neighborhood and had a student body to match.  Our racial demographic was pretty balanced…about 30/30/30/10 (with the 30s being white, Hispanic and African-American and the 10 being Asian).  As I’ve said, the predominant ideal of beauty comprised of caramel-toned skin, dark hair, light eyes and the curves of a woman twice your age.  Having only one out of those four down, I wasn’t considered the “hottest” of girls for most of my teens.

Being referred to as “white” was a grave insult in school.  When I was a child my sympathetic friends described my race as “clear.”  I burned my skin to a crisp those summers as I tried to tan evenly.  I dyed my hair brown (it ended up a dirty blonde and hasn’t returned to the white-wine color of my childhood since).  I made a big deal out of my Italian heritage (maiden name: RAMITTIO), which was the closest I could get to a minority bloodline.

Then came university, and the group of whitest roommates I could imagine: Gretchen from Maine, Caroline from a Boston suburb, Megan from upstate New York and Lauren from Michigan. 

And me. 

All my years of attempting to assimilate into another world left me ill-prepared for my new Dave Matthews Band-listening, pastel polo shirt-wearing friends.  Everyone’s skin was still tanning bed bronze, though.

Luckily college is a time to find the true you, so I eventually surrounded myself with a group of girls of varied interests and races whom I still consider my closest friends.  You can’t get me out into the sun without SPF 60 (melanoma is not worth the fabulous surfer skin) and I’m embracing my natural blonde…the color of antique gold jewelry.

But now I’m entering the 20-something world of pre-pregnancy and post-pregnancy weight, stretch marks and a slowing metabolism.  A whole new crop of body issues is sure to surface with this new stage I my life.  Hopefully my knowledge that I survived the last crop with a shred of self-confidence intact will help me weather anything new that comes my way.


PS -- Still struggling?  Check out Eve Ensler's play The Good Body.  Totally changes your perspective. 

The Weight Pendulum

"Would we call her 'chubby' ?"
"I think there's a pretty sizable ass there, yes, sir.  HUGE thighs." -- Love Actually

I inherited my mother's body type but my father's body shape.  I have shorter legs and a very long torso.  My mother graciously endowed me with her pear-bordering-on-hourglass type.  I have a 36C chest, a 32-inch waist (which I'm working on whittling) and hips in the 40-inch range (working on that one, too).  As a child I was extremely slim...I had a natural inclination to it as my mom had always been slim, I was very active and a picky eater.

My sisters were not so "lucky."  Both inherited my mother's proportions (longer legs and a shorter torso) but are more apple-shaped like my dad.  They tend to put weight on in their bellies first, and each has a smaller chest and hips than I do.  Both were overweight as children...Chloë (older) got thinner as she got taller but still has food issues.  Sarah (younger) has been an athlete for decades and tends to keep weight on as she trains.

To compensate, my mom regularly told the three of us Chloë and Sarah were more "naturally" beautiful than I was.  I was never allowed to tease them about their weight, but both my sisters could get away with insulting my slimness.  One of the most popular remarks had to do with the fact based on weight alone, I should have been in a booster seat in the car until I was 12 years old.  My sisters each had a full-length mirror in their rooms but I did not...Mom thought it would make me vain.  Looking back, keeping me humble (she calls it "grounded") seemed to be a mission for her.

Anyway, I was teased mercilessly for my lack of figure through elementary and middle school.  Kids regularly pulled the back of my shirts to snap my bra strap and collapsed in giggles when they found I didn't wear one.  In an urban culture where curves are celebrated, I was the odd one out.

I hit puberty at 16 (a mere week before Sarah did at 14) and started putting on some muscle.  By 18 I was 5'5" and about 140lbs.  I was still flat but I had some junk in my trunk, so I was coping.

Enter my Caucasian-heavy college years.  All of a sudden the slimness I hated in myself a few years ago was the epitome of beauty.  Even flat girls knew all the tricks to enhance their cup size and had practiced them from puberty.  All of a sudden the junk in my trunk got pitying looks from my size 00 roommates.

SIDENOTE: What the hell is size 00, anyway?  That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of.  Next thing you know there will be negative sizes.  "Yeah, I'm a 2 now but I'd like to be a -4 before the wedding."  Gross. 

The next stop in my body image saga: the Pill.  When I met My Husband at age 20, I decided he was the one I wanted to give my virginity to.  I put myself on the Pill and proceeded to put on about 20lbs, going from a 32B to a 36C.

It's almost six years later and I've swung pretty regularly between 145lbs and my current weight of 170lbs over that time.  At 5'8" I'm now considered overweight, which is a new experience for me.  I am a size 6 in dresses and a size 12 in pants because of my ass and thighs.

I'm trying not to focus on my weight anymore, but more on my fitness level.  I don't think I'll ever be rail thin again, and I don't want to be.  My Husband loves every inch of me, and I enjoy being a woman so I don't want to destroy all my soft parts. 

But still...there is that little voice inside me that bases my worth as a person by that number on the scale.