But first a rant. I'm postponing the post that I started earlier today because I just have to vent about the most infuriating news article that I've read in years. Possibly ever. Not exaggerating. It's hit close to home in several areas that I'm very sensitive about. You'll note my comment is the first one about the article, written two and a half hours after the initial post.
Slate.com, my favorite magazine, has links to Newsweek articles in its margins, so when I saw the headline, "Can Pregnancy Weight Gain Cause Childhood Obesity," I panicked. The implied answer to the question was "yes," and I packed 60 pregnancy pounds on my small frame (let's just say I gained more than half my original body weight). The recommended pregnancy weight gain for healthy weight women is 25-35 pounds, 28-40 for underweight women, a category I didn't quite fall into. Fortunately it's all gone now, and I'm still not really sure how that happened. So my initial reaction was one of fear for Jack's future health, as bizarre as that sounds since I've been worried for over half his life that he was too skinny. But that's mother guilt for you. (On a side note, all you moms seriously need to read "Perfect Madness," a book about how perfectionism among moms has escalated over the last 20 years, is reaching ridiculous levels, and how we as a society can work to fix that. All of you need to go out and buy it. Except you, Stacy--the copy I ordered you is already on its way.)
Right. So my reaction to the headline was horror for the fate of my son, but as I got a few lines into it, I was horrified for a different reason. The article cites a study done after researchers noted that children were more likely to have weight issues if their mother was overweight than if their father was overweight. Rat pups whose mothers were overfed (doesn't say by how much) during pregnancy turned out to be way fatter than their fat peers whose mothers ate healthily. Both sets of rat babies were fed a high-fat diet.
The article makes such 'reassuring' (said with loads of sarcasm) comments as "that doesn't mean that everyone who is obese is metabolically programmed in utero," and "overweight women don't always produce overweight kids" (emphasis mine in both). Seriously. It's all Mom's fault. And one researcher is quoted as saying, "We'd recommend that women try to lose weight [before becoming pregnant]." That would be reasonable to recommend for overweight or obese women planning to become pregnant but would not be true for underweight or normal weight women. A responsible way to word this would be, "We'd recommend that women obtain a healthy weight before becoming pregnant."
It went on to say that "studies indicate that most pregnant women--whether they started out normal-sized, overweight or obese {note: it clearly ignores the possibility of an underweight woman becoming pregnant}--are gaining more weight during their nine months than the national guidelines currently recommend." I can see how the study authors and article authors might think that they should perform a public service by telling women not to overdo it.
But I see another side. As a former anorexic (I was seriously ill all through high school and had occasional, relatively minor relapses throughout college), I see the possibility of pregnant women restricting their intake to a dangerous level based on these study results. I envision the possibility of calorie worries and pound anxiety hounding women for nine months.
I also question whether the weight guidelines should be revisited by health professionals. Most mommies I know started out normal weight and gained more than the recommended amount. And it wasn't because of junk food cravings. It was because, like me, they were just amazingly hungry for nine months (or at least a year if they breastfed). As a friend of mine put it when we were both about 8 weeks pregnant, "We're supposed to gain 5 pounds during the first trimester? Yeah, I've gained five pounds in my big toe already!"
Nearly every woman I know has worried, if only fleetingly, about the risks of getting pregnant (or the inability to do so) "late" in life. It seems like despite the increasing prevalence of women having successful pregnancies in their 40s and even 50s, all pregnancy literature has the looming threat of "35" hanging over it, as if pregnancy after that age was impossible and irresponsible. Women don't need that overblown pressure. And I think we could all get behind the idea that we really don't need to compound the pressures on those who are already pregnant by adding generational weight concerns to their worries. Let's wait for the human studies before we start writing articles that create anorexic pregnant women. Who knows what kind of damage starvation during pregnancy can have? Oh, wait, that's just one more thing for women to worry about...
The media seems to have tremendous guilt about having been a factor in an eating disorder epidemic among teenage girls. Apparently the media needs to be informed, however, that teenage girls aren't the only audience susceptible to irresponsible images and comments.
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