Fat like mommy

My mother always told me I was fat. Then I realized that she was afraid she was.

By Anne Burt

Dec 5, 2000 | I wanted it to be my mother's problem.

She was the one obsessed with weight. She was the one who hated her thighs. She cooked our meals, making nothing but salad for herself, then hovered over the kitchen sink sucking shreds of chicken meat off the bones we left behind because she was so hungry. Not me, I always declared. I have a positive sense of self. My body is my home.

Then my body became somebody else's home. Within 10 weeks after my pea-size fetus moved in, that home gained 15 pounds.

"Your mother only gained 15 pounds throughout her entire pregnancy with you," said my dad.

"Well, she also smoked throughout her entire pregnancy with me," I answered, in a weak attempt to hide how fat and inadequate I felt. After I hung up the phone, I went to my kitchen and made a pot of macaroni and cheese. It was July. I was so hot and so nauseated that all I could do was lie on the sofa in front of the air conditioner or eat pasta. Sometimes, when I did both at the same time, I counted it as exercise.

"You're gaining too much weight," my first obstetrician declared from behind his enormous desk. He was looking at my chart, not at me. He held the manila file with the records of my pregnancy thus far. His fingers were thick and stained with the unnatural caramel color that comes from regular sessions at a tanning salon.

"What do you think I should do about it?" I asked him, prepared to hear about nutritionists, prenatal exercise programs and salad. He tapped his fingers on the desk. I couldn't imagine this man reaching inside me to help pull out my child.

"Eat less," he said, still looking at my chart.

At that moment, I knew I was leaving his practice. What if I hadn't read all those books about pregnancy and I had interpreted "eat less" to mean "diet"? I could seriously harm my baby by following his idiotic advice. He droned on, spewing some incomprehensible crap about pregnant pioneers in covered wagons bouncing merrily over the prairies and how modern women worry too much. ("Although you're a Jew, right?" he asked. When I answered yes, he said, "Me too. Our ancestors didn't know from covered wagons.")

To my recollection, lots of those carefree pioneers died en route to the West. I asked the receptionist to make copies of that chart of mine before I left.

But the doctor's words had left an indelible impression. I was gaining too much weight. Suddenly, all my self-assurance went right out the window. Every pregnancy-related pound I added made me sweat in fear of a lifetime of fat.

Next Page: While I swell, my mother shrinks

• View blog reactions