A High-Risk Pregnancy?

During my routine prenatal session with my midwife, I discovered that simply because of my height and weight, I will be labeled a “high-risk pregnancy.” At the time, I was not a bit phased by this. I know that the BMI charts were created by insurance companies who are experts on health and would know what a healthy weight and height combination is, of course (sarcasm). My midwife wasn’t the least bit concerned because I told her what my diet looks like and my recent weight loss (roughly 50lbs over the past 2 years). My reply was simply, “Well that means insurance will pay for more tests, right?” and then I laughed. I was genuinely not phased because I know that the BMI charts are a result of a bunch of fat-prejudiced white guys who decided that skinny is better. Whatever. I’m long since over it.

But then…

I called to make an ultrasound appointment and ended up nearly in tears.

To make a long story short, the woman trying to help me schedule my ultrasound heard the words “high-risk pregnancy” and referred me to the only place that does high-risk pregnancy ultrasounds, which severely limited my ability to schedule an ultrasound at a reasonable time and place. Now granted, this was a miscommunication because I have never made an appointment like this on my own and I wasn’t sure how the heck to read the order that had been printed. Also, the woman was asking for information that wasn’t labeled the way she was asking for it. So, I do not blame her for trying to be helpful with the information she had been able to gather from me.

The problem here is that this “high-risk” label caused unnecessary strife for me and my midwife and every other person I subsequently called, nearly crying. (I was frustrated and just wanted to see my baby and do as my midwife needed me to do.)

You see, I spent the next hour and a half trying to get ahold of my midwife and trying to figure out if there really was only one location that I could get an ultrasound done. I got ahold of her, thank goodness. She was lovely and patient and straight up said the information I had gleaned was wrong. (Yay!)

I finally got ahold of the right place and the right person and left out the “high-risk” label while scheduling the ultrasound (for fear that I would get transferred to the wrong place, again) and I got my ultrasound scheduled! It’s today, by the way. 🙂

So, all this to say…LABELS SUCK.

It literally says on my chart: “Obesity complicating pregnancy”

Um, seriously? I’m obese? Since when is a size 12 obese?? Granted I’m not a size 12 through the middle right now, but I’m making a friggin’ person in there so I get a pass.

Here’s a pic of pre-preggers me if you’re looking for a reference point.

The high-risk label really did come as a surprise to me. I figured if the midwife talked to me about my diet and whatnot, she could take the label off. Not the case, it seems. It is discouraging to have made so many changes, to have seen so many changes, but then for it to come to naught, in a sense, when it comes to medical professionals.

Frankly, you can take your high-risk, obese labels and shove them where the sun doesn’t shine. Because I don’t fit those labels. And I’m sure there are plenty more Moms-to-be that are in the same boat as me.

But I don’t need to prove anything to anyone. I eat highly nutritious foods—lots of fruits and veggies. I feel better than I have since High School. I have healed and am still on a healing path—spiritually, mentally and physically.

I’ll just need to be my own advocate and go into medical environments remembering how far I have come and how much happier my body is these days.

Eat well. Keep moving. Let your body do what it’s going to do and be the shape it’s comfortable being. I’m not about to force myself to try and fit an across-the-board, generic label that doesn’t allow for difference and diversity. Difference and diversity are what make up this world. And it is wonderfully and beautifully made.

This is NOT a Diet

In the sense that “diet” means: Restrict oneself to small amounts or special kinds of food in order to lose weight: “it is difficult to diet in a house full of cupcakes,” then NO, I am most certainly NOT on a diet! I know that diet also means: “The kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats,” but that’s not generally how people use that word and that’s not how people have recently used that word in reference to my new food adventures.

Someone recently said, “Oh, aren’t you doing some new diet thing?” My heart sank.

There are so many deeply rooted issues with diets! One of which is the perceived need for people to diet in order to loose weight. I don’t want to feed that need! I am fat and I will very likely stay that way.

People think that overweight people are just weak and lazy and over-indulgent. Try to let go of that belief because it’s just not true.

(More info about that in an earlier blog post.)

Even at my skinniest I was considered overweight by the height and weight charts (and therefore also my doctors).

So, “fat” is what I have always been, it is part of who I am and it is where I will stay. In fact, I am quite happy to do so! I think I’m rather cute! 🙂

Changing what I am putting into my body is my way of trying to heal my life-long skin issues and my near 5-year intestinal issues through food, rather than doctor prescribed medicine. I am doing it this way for a couple of reasons.

1. Doctors are expensive. Leafy greens are not. And hey, I gotta eat anyway, right?
2. One of my issues is an intestinal issue, therefore, it stands to reason that the food I put into my intestines can have a directly positive, or negative, affect.
3. I have already witnessed that certain foods are “problem” foods for me and the simplest way to take care of this is to just cut it out. This is actually what my doctor told me to do. “Dairy seems to be a problem?” he asked me. I nodded. “Can you cut it out of your diet?” “Sure,” I replied. So, there you go. Doctor’s orders.

So, yes, I am changing what I am eating. However, I am not “on a diet.”

Last year, I tried to change what I was eating as well, to try and heal my gut. However, I thought of myself as going on a diet. I thought things like, “Oh man, I want that, but I can’t have it!” And I think this was the destruction of my efforts to heal my gut through food.

Things are different now. I’m thinking more along the lines of, “I can have that, but I don’t want it because…” and then I fill in the blanks. So, when I see ice cream and think, “Oh man, I want that!” I think to myself, “You can have that, no problem. But do you really want to deal with nausea and running to the bathroom? Is it worth it?” The answer now is no, it’s not worth it and I remind myself that my coconut ice cream is at home in the freezer.

I’m no longer depriving myself through diet and this has helped me keep on going. This blog has also helped me keep eating things that won’t cause nasty health-related side effects. And I am delighted!

I mean, now that I know that dairy and citrus are problematic for me, why eat them? Why suffer for eating dairy products when there are other alternatives? Quite delicious ones, I might add! Why eat citrus if I know it’s going to make me itch and give me a rash on 60% of my skin?

This is step one. Experimenting, observing and eliminating accordingly. Amazingly, when I eliminate foods, I don’t feel deprived, I feel energized! I want to get creative and find something new to create in the kitchen that will satisfy my taste buds and the rest of my body as well! It’s an adventure in creativity and I accept the challenge! 🙂

So, please remember, this is NOT a diet. This is a journey to healing. It is an experiment in following my inner wisdom, my higher power, as it relates to my bodily health and my food.

Tuesday, March 19th, 2013

DAILY SYMPTOM LOG 

SKIN: redness showed no improvement in the morning, but then faded as the day went on; itchy sensation subsided as the day went on; raised patches of dry skin remain; overall shows slight improvement

GUT: nearly imperceptible rumblings; generally normal feeling; REALLY normal bathroom experience! Hooray! 

OTHER: got a slight runny nose & more mucus coating throat after eating the General Tso’s Chicken; general muscle sore/stiff feeling mostly gone; no headache

FOOD: allergen-free cereal, organic strawberries, chia seeds, coconut yogurt; General Tso’s Chicken (pretty sure there’s refined sugar, dairy, eggs and gluten in this stuff, though in small amounts); veggie-mix salad (cucumber, celery, red onion, radishes, black olives, diced garlic, olive oil, apple cider vinegar, mustard, Italian seasoning, powdered onion, sea salt); Raw Greens Massage Salad (olive oil, balsamic vinegar, sea salt, curly green kale, endive, romaine, strawberries, cashews, walnuts, sesame seeds); 1 vanilla cupcake; 2 Mexican Chocolate Cupcakes

This is NOT about losing weight

Many people would look at me and tell me that my weight is a problem. I am 5’4″ and I weigh roughly 210 lbs.

When I was in High School, and in my peak physical condition (from playing sports and training for said sports). I was the same height and I weighed 165 lbs. The height-weight chart that my pediatrician would check when I came in for check-ups said that my healthy weight for my height was 135 lbs. The doctor told me that I was over-weight. He tried to be gentle about it, which I appreciate, but it was clear that he believed that I was not healthy because of my weight. Therefore, I believed the same.

When I got to college, I took my first Women’s and Gender Studies class and learned about fat bias, or fat hatred. Fat bias is weight-based prejudice and discrimination. It is pervasive in our culture and we are enculturated to it with no awareness that it is happening. Fat bias manifests itself in so many ways, I will not attempt to list them all here, but here are two primary ways that fat bias manifests itself:

• fat = bad / thin = good beliefs
• weight-based definitions of health

(For more information, check out Marilyn Wann’s book, “FAT!SO?” or her website or this CNN article about Marilyn Wann’s activism around fat bias.)

For me, this new knowledge helped me to stop hating my body, to stop hating myself for eating food and to stop seeing food as the enemy! This slowly revolutionized my self-worth and the way that I behaved around food. I still have some issues in this area that I am working on, but I can now get creative with food (enjoy food, even!) without feeling like I’m being “bad” for eating more that some celery and carrots because LORD knows I’m too fat to eat anything but that!

Food is fun, not an enemy! We are made to eat, we have to eat to survive! So now, I am asking myself, what is the food I am eating doing to my body? How is the food I am eating connected to my mood, to my cravings, to my emotions? Does one cause the other? Why do I just WANT ice cream sometimes and not other times? What need, social, emotional or mental, is food filling for me? And why do I get more food-focused when I tell myself I’m going to try not to eat “x” food.

This last question is a crucial one because my skin issues and my gut issues seem to be intimately connected to what foods I am eating. I have been experimenting, with myself the “guinea pig” over the past few months and I have begun to see some connections between dairy, wheat and white sugar and my skin/gut issues. When I am not eating those things, my skin begins to clear up and I have less gut gurgling and other issues. So, those are the three things I am for CERTAIN cutting out of my diet. Overall, these are the foods & food like products I am cutting out:

AVOID THESE FOODS:

Dairy

Wheat (anything with gluten–it won’t always say “wheat” on a package)

White Sugar

Eggs

MINIMIZE THESE FOODS:

Soy

Fried Food

Artificial Sweeteners

In avoiding and minimizing such foods, I may loose some weight. I fear this. I fear I will focus on the weight loss, become fixated on that, and forget the real reason for changing my food habits. The real reason for all of this is to find healing for my skin and my gut through food, which I believe can be done, at least partly, if not fully. Being transparent about this fear, of losing my true purpose, will hopefully help keep me on the healthy track.

In addition to being transparent about this fear in this blog entry, I will keep my focus on healing through food by cataloging how my skin and gut symptoms are doing at the end of each blog entry. I will also write a summary of what foods I’ve eaten that day. In this way, my purpose for cutting out certain foods will always be before me and if my body changes, then it changes, but I won’t focus on that so that I can steer clear of the temptation to fall back into believing that I am not good because I am fat.

SKIN: redness remains, but no itchy sensations. raised patches of dry skin minimizing, not as intense as yesterday.

GUT: minimal gurgling, less gas than yesterday.

FOOD: Homemade (no sugar) BBQ Pork with Blue Corn Chips (Organic, Non-GMO); 1 large gala apple; leftover Matsa Man Curry with shrimp from Rose Thai; some cucumbers, carrots, sugar snap peas and red pepper humus; veggies (carrots, red pepper, yellow pepper) & rainbow fruit skewers (pineapple, oranges, blueberries, strawberries, kiwi, grapes)