Baby Weight

It's been a salty, sordid week so I did myself a huge favor by staying off of the scale today because I knew it would have been painful. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss. Knowing it was a 50/50 on restraint this week, I want to believe that if I don't weigh myself, then no harm, no foul. I've been weighing myself long enough to know that you can have a really focused week and not lose a thing, but eat one cashew during the week and you gain five pounds (and maybe it was more than just ONE cashew...).

One of the big emotional food bombs for me this week was that my oldest "baby" turned thirty. Besides the fact that I am celebrating how successful my son is despite his upbringing, I'm reflecting on all of the baby weight I acquired over the years and wondering if I really do have any regrets about being as big as I am if it was all in the name of childbirth. For thirty years, I have been able to believe that my weight has less to do with chocolate than it has to do with the fact that I bore six children in ten years (during the first ten years of my marriage), and I got toxemia (preeclampsia) with every one of them AND our second child died of SIDS when she was three months old, AND our next son, born nine months later, had a coarctation of the aorta that required that he be flown to Primary Children's Medical Center when he was five days old and had open-heart surgery when he was a week old. Just writing about it makes me wish Baskin-Robbins was still open.

All of this started shortly after I got married when I was two weeks shy of my twenty-first birthday. I got pregnant immediately because we only briefly discussed the timeline for children, and because I had several friends experiencing infertility issues, we opted out of birth control. This is the part where ignorance was less than bliss.

Our oldest son was born ten days before our nine month wedding anniversary. Before you judge our worthiness for temple recommends, I was induced three weeks prior to my due date because of the severity of the toxemia. I retained so much water that my own mother didn't recognize me when I was standing right next to my husband. I also didn't lose all of it after the baby was born. At my post-natal check-up, the nurse seemed concerned when she commented on how much weight I had lost. I told her I had delivered three months prior. Her response? "Oh!" Apparently she thought I was still pregnant. Not encouraging.

Before I lost much more weight, I became pregnant again and our oldest daughter was born eighteen months after our son. She was a beautiful, healthy baby girl who, because God lives by natural laws, died suddenly at three months old. That was a tough one for a twenty-two-year-old mom with Fairy Tale Syndrome to take, but we moved forward with faith and nine months after she passed away, we had our second son.

We brought him home as a healthy baby but five days later his breathing and coloring became erratic and it was determined he had a congenital heart defect that required surgery when he was a week old.  That still didn't temper our faith (or our youthful stupidity) as we had our second daughter eighteen months later. On our fifth wedding anniversary, at the age of twenty-five, I had given birth to four children. I was also grossly overweight and incredibly worn down physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Fortunately I had youth on my side and as my father always said, "You do what you have to do." We did what we had to do to get through all of it and somehow we kept moving forward.

Through it all, we were very, very well fed. Neighbors brought dinners over with each life event and we're talking really good dinners. When you live in Huntsville among cattle ranchers and dairy farmers, you get roasts, potatoes, and some of the best home-made rolls ever produced. I maintain I had my last three children just for the quality and quantity of food the neighbors would bring. Add to that all of the celebrations and family gatherings that children create and we were beyond well fed. It is during this time that I think I unknowingly sealed my fate with food. But I survive(d).

We did finally figure out what was causing some of what was happening and I stopped allowing my husband to put his pants on any bed where I might possibly be sleeping. It worked for four years during which time I bought a bike and started those daily rides around the lake. It was awesome. It was also productive and I lost almost all of my weight before I got pregnant again with our third son and then two years later our third daughter. You can probably guess what happened with the weight. That was almost twenty years ago and I'm still calling it baby weight. I think I have that right, even if it's not true.

After my last delivery, my doctor told me that I had pretty much thrashed my metabolism. My thyroid was messed up (and isn't it every fat girl's dream to be told it's her thyroid that's the problem, even if it ultimately turns out that isn't the problem), my blood pressure wouldn't come down, and I simply didn't have the time, energy, or desire to take control. I think that was all the excuse I needed to accept myself at whatever size I was and relinquish myself of personal responsibility for trying to lose weight.

My advice - DON'T DO THAT!!!

In any case, that was thirty years ago and realistically, I could have another thirty years. Although neither my husband nor I have been surgically altered, I'm pretty sure the next thirty years will not bring any more births for us. Make that extremely sure. Not everybody gains excessive weight when they have children (especially if you live in the areas of Los Angeles and St. George). I'm not one of them. But every pound I carry is worth it, if that's what it took for me to have the amazing, brilliant, and complex children that I have (and even better, the grandchildren!). Regrets? Not so much.

Our last "child" living at home is set to move away for school in two months. Since I am now too far removed from childbirth to keep blaming that for my weight, at least I will soon have "empty nest" to blame it on. Blaming others sure beats the heck out of taking personal responsibility (but that's another, more politically charged, post for another time...)

I guess I'll go put away the cashews and do a couple of leg lifts. If not, it's my own fault.