Home Stretch Weight Gain

I had a doctor's appointment this week, and as usual, I was weighed. I can't remember if I'd mentioned this before, but this doctor has one of those scales where you muck around with the little weights in order to figure out how much you weigh. By contrast, my old doctor just had a scale with the big needle. For the last few visits, I couldn't figure out how to read the scale at my current doctor's office, because the numbers just seemed really weird. This week, the nurse moved a big weight to the 40 mark, and a small weight to the 19 mark. And then it dawned on me: THIS IS A METRIC SCALE! Major DUH moment. :P

I won't go into too much of a rant over metric vs. imperial except that for an overall metric country, I HATE the fact that most people still refer to their height in feet and their weight in pounds. Pretty back-assed, if you ask me. Anyway, I guess I must've been somewhat brainwashed over the last few years, because now I always refer to my weight in pounds and my height in feet, so I always have to do the conversion to quote it the "right" (metric) way.

Anyway, I digress. So as of Monday, I finally "figured" out my current pregnancy weight (40kg + 19kg = 59kg). I guess I could've weighed myself at home, but I've refused to do so ever since I got pregnant. Don't ask why - it makes no sense. In the spirit of the metric system, I calculated my pre-pregnancy weight in kilos, and determined that so far, I've gained 11kg in the last 33 weeks. I decided to search around the Web to see if that weight gain was normal, and this is what I found on BabyCenter.ca. The first part of the article says that you're looking at gaining an average of 11kg by the end of your pregnancy when you add up things like baby, placenta, uterine growth, extra blood volume, and so on. At 33.5 weeks, I had already gained 11kg. Alarm bells went off in my mind. Now, before you feel the urge to smack me because of my weight gain complaints, read on. Then you may give me a virtual smack. :) As I was saying, I read further down the page, and realized that 11kg is merely an AVERAGE (makes sense), and that the amount of weight you should gain during pregnancy is based on your BMI. Being the keener that I am, I calculated my pre-pregnancy BMI to be approximately 18.75. According to the BabyCenter.ca article, it means that I should be gaining between 12.5kg and 18kg. The 18kg (~40lbs for you non-metric folks out there) upper-limit seems a bit excessive, and I'm guessing that that's reserved for women who were under-weight before getting pregnant. The moral of the story is that my 11kg (~24lb) gain over 33.5 weeks is normal enough, so I really should shut the hell up.

I really have no reason to worry. Most people have told me that I look pretty good for a pregnant gal, and that alone should have been reassuring. I guess I need the backing of numbers to re-assure me. I have to admit that freaked out a bit when I read a few weeks back that rapid weight gain occurs in the 3rd trimester and that, while that's normal, I don't want to go crazy and gain more than I need to by having sweets and all that. I live off of fruits and fruit juices. I tend to drink the no-sugar-added juices, but even "natural" fruit juices still HAVE naturally-occurring sugar. I would hate to be doing well throughout my pregnancy weight-wise, only to blow up in the home stretch.

I probably sound like a broken record today, since I've harped on the weight thing here and there throughout the life of this blog. The purpose of this blog, however, is to allow me to vent, so venting is what I've done. On that note, I promise to not mention the weight gain thing ever again on my blog for the duration of my pregnancy.