Bring Me All of the Food

“Gain 40-50 pounds,” they said.

That’s an unusual statement for a woman to hear from her doctor but it’s exactly what my perinatologist told me once I’d lost the 30 lbs of water weight and another 10lbs from morning sickness.

I think the concept of needing to gain weight has remained as a left-over in my mind, pardon the food pun.

When you lose a baby or babies, I think it’s common to go back over each aspect of your pregnancy looking for something you could have done, should have done better. For me, eating and gaining weight was something I’d struggled with.

I just didn’t want to eat. Ice cream, cake, heavy foods….none of it had sounded good. When I wasn’t heaving I wanted watermelon, mainly. Lots and lots of it. One time I even made it to the grocery store check-out line before Jeff looked down at me and laughed aloud–my cheeks were the light red-orange of my favorite fruity snack.

My doctor reassured me it was alright not to gain more, but that it would be better if I could. I sat on our black leather couch more hours than I care to think about, trying to choke down as much pasta noodles with cheese as I possibly could before my brain realized I was too full. It sounds like a very first-world problem. Maybe it was.

A few weeks before they were born I’d finally been able to eat like a normal person again, but I never felt like it was enough. I felt good that I found some chocolate chip cupcakes I loved and I ate the shit out of them. I really loved those cupcakes. On bed rest I ate huge meals through intense fear, realizing every gram of weight on my babies mattered. Jeff bought me cupcakes. He knew I loved them. Eventually I felt guilty because I’d read near the end of bed rest that sugar could cause inflammation which could be related to preterm labor so I stopped eating them.

The days after they were born food was a major issue for me. I’d been eating blueberries for antioxidants and the remaining package of “their” berries was in the refrigerator. I ate all of the foods they’d eaten with me and sobbed. It was a last connection to them. Fleeting, perishable, impermanent. I ate those blueberries mindfully, and wished they would last forever. That I could always have this thing that we had together. I suppose ultimately I find myself wishing I’d found the diet or food that could have protected my babies and eaten it from day one like my life depended on it– like their lives depended on it. Truthfully, I don’t think that food exists.

It’s compelling to draw a line of self-blame to the one thing I had control over, eating, but no one on Earth knows why they were born early. Aside from them being twins….and my having fertility treatments, which are risk-factors. No doctor has, or probably ever will, blamed what I ate. And, in my heart of hearts, I don’t blame me either. It’s a scary thought but I probably didn’t have much of any control over their pregnancy at all.

Even so, there are moments where I feel like I still need to be gaining weight. Like somehow extra pounds of pre-gained weight means safety. I have thoughts about eating all the junk and treats in the freezer and cookie aisles as rebellion to the perfect diet I’d had when we were trying to conceive. And I have similar thoughts of eating those things as self- punishment. Because if all that planning and love and intention and endurance brought us this outcome then part of me wants to burn the proverbial house down. Maybe I hate feeling like I’m trying. Maybe self sabotage feels safer, I don’t know. You know that quote about shooting for the moon because even if you miss you land in the stars? I call B.S. Sometimes you land in hell. Or the ice cream section. It’s something to think about.

How do you deal with food and feelings?