Week 9

Your Baby:

• Is about the size of a grape, or perhaps a cocktail olive, the kind that’s marinated in vermouth and stuffed with blue cheese.
• (Is not marinated in vermouth or stuffed with blue cheese.)
• Has fingers and toes and eyelids and ears.
• External boy and girl-parts are present, but won’t be really distinguishable for another couple weeks.

You:

• Have a uterus the size of a flipping grapefruit, lady.
• *BARF* Again. Still.
• With all the extra blood pumping through your system (about 50% more blood volume, actually), your body temperature may be a little jacked up — if you’re constantly complaining about being too hot or too cold, this is why.

You may have gained some weight already (that was me, two weeks ago), or you may have lost some weight (that’s me, now). Here’s how your weight gain should pan out over the next seven months or so, at least according to your average pregnancy book or website:

12 pounds: Maternal stores (fat, protein, Cheezits, etc.)
4 pounds: Increased fluid volume, aka water weight, aka blooooaaaat
2 pounds: IN YOUR BRA
2 pounds: Uterus
2 pounds: Amniotic fluid
1.5 pounds: Mmmmmplacenta
7.5 pounds: Baby! (“HA!” says the woman who birthed a 10-pounder.)

So that means the average pregnancy book thinks you should gain no more than 31 pounds total. Otherwise, you are a big fat fattie who ate her weight in Cheezits because she thought pregnancy gave her a free pass. YOU FAIL PREGNANCY!

The truth is, weight gain in pregnancy varies WILDLY from woman to woman, just like our “normal” weights and metabolisms vary. Some women can eat and eat and eat and still gain weight in line with the guide above, while others seem to balloon up no matter how healthy and reasonable their diets are. It’s all about genetics (ask your mom how much she gained), your pre-pregnancy level of fitness and metabolism, and also just some random streaks of luck.

Sometimes weight gain will vary for the same woman over different pregnancies.

Obviously, we all want to eat healthy and make sure our babies are getting all the right nutrients and none of us want to struggle with 20 extra pounds of “baby weight” for the next 20 years. It does feel nice to indulge in that entire pint of ice cream or box of cookies, but blah blah blah moderation.

You know what? Just do your best. It’ll be enough, I promise.

Oh Yeah, THIS: The hair on my legs and other…ahem…areas is growing alarmingly fast. That is all.

New This Time Around: Ages and ages ago, before I ever had any babies, I was that girl who was always cold. Always! I took a sweater everywhere in case of air conditioning, and I’d get goose bumps from having the car windows down in 80-degree weather. And then I got pregnant and ACK! HOT! ALWAYS SO HOT! I couldn’t sleep under the covers and was always sweaty and OF COURSE I was pregnant during some of the hottest temperatures Washington, DC had seen in years. I’ve bordered on being “too hot” ever since.

This time I am so freaking cold I cannot stand it. I need more blankets and flannel pyjamas and I can make grown men scream with the slightest poke of my corpse-like ice-cold feet. The temperature was in the high 60s the other day and I wandered around with my teeth chattering. Bah.

Related post: Pregnancy and COVID-19: What We Know (& a Few Things We Don’t)