A weighty issue

I've never been one to know how much I weigh.  I can normally guess, give or take 5 pounds, but normally my indicators are how my clothes fit.  I've always had a little extra around the gut area, sometimes a little, sometimes a little more than a little, but I normally have a handle on what to do to get rid of it and it's never been awful.  (The exception being before I knew I had celiac... that was awful because I was working super hard to get rid of it and it just wouldn't go.)

But now, I have to weight myself all the time.  During my first and second trimesters, it was once a month, with the goal of seeing numbers rise, and if they didn't, I got scolded and asked to gain a little more weight.  At the start of my third trimester, I weighed myself every two weeks, and for the last month it's been every week.  I can honestly say I have never weighed myself every week before now.  The concept is just foreign to me, because I can honestly tell you I have never cared what the number on the scale was.  I know I'm getting bigger.  It's pretty freaking obvious.  Now, to be fair, it is a little startling to see numbers I never dreamed I would see on a scale, but I know that it's for a good cause, so I don't really mind.

Throughout my pregnancy, I have noticed a few things.  Let us look at a point form list, shall we?

• People call me tiny.  It's odd, since I weigh a lot more than I ever have and I have a huge belly.   I think the skinny jeans and the fact that I still continue to have no ass are contributing factors to that optical illusion. Tiny has never been a word people have used to describe me, except for that unfortunate time in high school when I had tonsillitis multiple times in two months and lost all sorts of weight. I really WANTED to eat, I just couldn't.
• My weight really differs from morning to afternoon.  When my appointments are in the morning, I will have gained a pound or stayed the same since the previous week's appointment.  When they are later in the day, I'll be up two or three pounds.  Can we tell I may be retaining a bit of water throughout the day?
• People flat out ask me "how much have you gained?"  I find that crazy.  In what situation would someone ask that question other than pregnancy??  Crazier?  I'll tell them. I won't tell them the names we have picked out for our baby, but I'll easily spill the number of pounds I'm up.
• Other people tell me about their or their wife's weight gain.  I really don't want or need to know how your wife has ballooned like a blimp, and I'm pretty sure she doesn't want you to share that with me either.  If your wife had gained 60 pounds and she wasn't pregnant, would you tell me then?  I doubt it.  Granted, I have asked people about their weight gain during pregnancy, so I am equally guilty of this odd behaviour.

I think the main reason for my reasonable weight gain is that I haven't given myself a free pass to eat whatever I want.  I know a lot of women do that during pregnancy, and that's fine, but I didn't want to be left with this enormous task of losing it all post baby.  By no means am I dieting, and I am giving myself many more liberties than I normally would, but I am still conscious of what I eat and when I eat it.  That being said, today might not be the best example of my healthy diet, since I've had three chocolate chip cookies (someone made them just for me; I HAD to eat them), two little brownies (I made those... no excuse) and some ice cream.  I'll just give today a pass and work on tomorrow. 

I also think genetics have had something to do with my weight gain.  My mum didn't gain much when she was pregnant with both my sister and me.  She also wasn't sick during her pregnancies, which is especially lucky, since she has an abnormal aversion to being sick, and she point blank said to me "good thing I wasn't sick when I was pregnant with your sister, because you probably wouldn't be here!"  I am thankful for her lack of nausea which in turn has allowed me to experience the same.  The fact alone that I haven't thrown up once made me a little nervous at first that I WOULD gain lots of weight, since I had a fine appetite and could eat until the cows came home, but luckily that wasn't the case.

All in all, this obligatory emphasis on weight has been a new experience for me, and I hope to go back to my old non-weighing no-number-knowing self after the baby is born.  I'm in the "safe zone" for pregnancy weight gain as it stands (and maybe today's treats gave me an extra pound or two for my weigh-in on Thursday) so I don't need to worry, and hopefully the baby will be healthy, and I can go back to not stepping on a scale aside from my annual physical soon.

Do you find pregnancy makes people a lot more open about their weight?