Anastasia’s pregnancy diary: weeks 10-12

Meanwhile I lose my waist. Overnight. My figure is an hourglass shape and my small waist was probably the best thing about my body. Now that it’s not small anymore, I feel like a tree trunk. There is no bump to explain my sudden loss of shape, I simply don’t fit into any of my clothes anymore and I look like a shapeless blob. One of my many new books shows a model going through her pregnancy week by week, with a naked photograph of her body side-on. By week 12 the book smugly reports that she has not gained a single ounce.

This information drives my curiosity and competitive spirit beyond the fear of the scales. I have always avoided weighing myself, simply because it causes me too much anxiety. I have never had a weight problem, aside from the one I, like most women, have created in my own mind. The fact that I’m 5’10” also means I weigh more than the average girl and I have always dreaded the actual number, no matter how ‘normal’ it might be for my height. Anyway, this damned woman in the book seduces me straight to our very dusty bathroom scales and I gingerly step on. Well. It seems to me I have gained ten pounds already. Ten pounds in as many weeks! To be fair, I’m not exactly sure what I weighed before I got pregnant, but I vaguely remember a number that seemed to be TEN POUNDS under what this scale reads. Oh my God. Suddenly I feel like a failure, a whale, a pregnant woman too fat to be featured in a book about healthy pregnancy. I vow to go to the gym. Tomorrow.