OK, initially I wasn't going to address the weight issue at all. Not because a feminist cannot worry about her weight; she can. Rather, because I can't stand the modern formula, "Isn't it amazing, an intelligent person like me, worrying about such an unintelligent thing!" It's annoying. Your IQ doesn't stay locked in amber like a beetle, while you get busy calculating the calories in a Müller Light.
And yet ... well, I have spent enough time talking about poo and dribble and childbirth and stitches and arguments and breast milk and now it seems wilfully squeamish to pretend that in all that time I was pregnant I didn't put on any weight and that if I had, I wouldn't have minded. If you are not pregnant, or you have already been pregnant once and you know as much and more than I know, turn away now. But if you are first-time pregnant, memorise this information. You will save yourself so much time trying to collate all the other information, which always conflicts because almost all of it is a total lie.
Some people, in their first trimester, get morning sickness, so they don't gain weight; if it is not true of you, I don't want to sound like a hippy, but you need to just deal with it, man. Because you will be hungry all the time. It is like being a sex addict, only with food: in the middle of each exquisite mealtime, you will be planning your next. And all those books that say "you need not necessarily put on any weight at all in your first trimester" only say that because they're trying to look on the bright side. If you're one of the ones who eats, seeking to rectify this is like taking up yoga and seeking to become Indian, so you will have a better muscle-to-fat ratio and be able to do the impressive headstand. It isn't going to happen, love! Untold centuries of evolution for Nordic chills have made you what you are.
Some people, in their second trimester, get really bad indigestion, and this means they can't eat as much as they would like. This happened to S, and also to me, but I, having more backbone than S, managed to power through it and eat anyway. This is the bit where you get really incredibly sensitive about how pregnant you look, because you have a dim sense that if you don't look identifiably pregnant yet, then that means you haven't put on much weight. Total rubbish! Looking pregnant and being fat are two totally different things, as any onlooker would tell you, if only they had the balls. You might hit five months with the most pronounced bump ever, but be slim all over and just be one of those people with a giant placenta or a big show-off foetus. Or you might be weeks away from demonstrable pregnancy, like I was, but that doesn't mean you aren't fat. It's more likely to mean you are. Probably the stuff round the back is balancing the bit round the front and making it seem smaller. Definitely don't take offence if someone says you look really pregnant, but don't take solace if they say you don't. Don't take anything. Just concentrate on eating, because if you eat and don't concentrate, it won't count and you will have to immediately sit down and do it all over again.
Some people in their third trimester will find it ironic, perhaps paradoxical, maybe even amusing, that just when they feel the largest, their weight will plateau or even, gosh!, diminish. This was not true of me, and I've never met anyone of whom it was true, but I did see a woman in the Your Pregnant Body book in a blue leotard making this outlandish claim, so it must be true somewhere, of somebody. I don't know what to tell you that won't be exactly like the last thing I told you. There is no way of wishing yourself to be that blue-leotard lady, least of all at this stage.
When I was eight-and-a-half months pregnant, I read an article by some stupid doctor who said that anything more than a stone and a half's weight gain would interfere with your labour.
Ten months on, I still can't wrap my tongue around the unwieldy bulk of my outrage. Damn it all, I have run out of space before I've even got post-natal. To becontinued. This time, I mean it.
