Does Fat Indicate What Kind of Mother You Are?

Now that we've established that outsiders believed me to be fat because I must be lazy and eat a bunch of junk food or eat nonstop, I'd like to talk about the moment I realized that the way I looked impacted what people thought about my parenting ability or judgment in relation to what I may be feeding my children. Rather, one child in particular.

Firstly, I've come to realize that today's medical profession treats us all the same, despite our genetic differences and predispositions. Much like how when I was in labor with my children I was virtually ignored and treated as if I weren't in actual labor because I was still smiling, I and my children, as are all of you, categorized. You must fit into this neat little category or categories no matter what your situation or circumstances.

I've already discussed in a prior post how my first child was, and still is, beanpole thin. So thin you could see his ligamens and skeletal system actually working and he had only gained 1 pound per year from the ages of 1 to 3. My second child, a girl, was EXACTLY the same. Same weights at same ages even. Now, let's move onto my 3rd little adorable medical chart anomoly.

My surprise blessing third child was born at exactly the same length and weight as my first. However, he quickly pudged up and filled out, which was the opposite of the first. Why? Who knows. The ironic thing here is that the first was formula fed and the third was breastfed, which goes against the "hard fast" rule that formula contributes to obesity in ALL cases. My youngest grew and he grew quickly. When he was 16 months old I remembered to add his not-so-little footprints to a stool I had already decorated with the footprints from the first two children. However, the first two children's prints were placed upon the stool when the first was 4-1/2 and the second was 2-1/2 years of age. I quickly discovered that this toddler's feet at the age of 16 months were too big to just place upon the step front without turning them at an angle to make them fit. After noticing just how big his feet were, I measured them. His little big feet were barely 1/4 inch shorter than a 4-1/2-year-old's feet.

After that first year, it was evident everyone everywhere we went thought he was older than he was. We received comments about the size of his hands and feet regularly. People would ask how old he was because he was still bald and they would frequently say "Look at the size of his 'paws'." I had, at that point, always smiled and shared comparison stories about his size. I just felt he was going to be a big boy and he was simply different than his siblings, just as I am 5'8 while 2 of my sisters are around 5'4" and another is 6' tall. We're all different shapes and sizes as well.

The problem comes in when his pediatrician decides he doesn't like his weight at the age of 2 years. I can't remember his height and weight then today, but it was abnormal to them. He wasn't obese to us but these new pediatric BMI and height and growth charts prompted the pediatrician to look at me in an exacerbated manner and ask me in a tone that did not go unnoticed by me, "What are WE gonna do about this mom?"

What was there to do? The child loved his vegetables. I received instructions to stop giving him fruits, to allow my child to ask for seconds, and a lot of inquiries as to his diet. It was really intrusive, as if I had abused my prior two children with food or something, but those kids were both in school at the time my little cherub and I sat in the pediatrician's office during his well child visits, so considering I'm just one out of a thousand patients, they have no idea about this, as in no comparison to make. I told them I did allow him to ask for seconds and he most certainly did ask for seconds. The only difference between my first two babies and this one was that I had become more domesticated by learning how to cook over the years and the third child actually ate homemade babyfood compared to jarred babyfood the first two ate.

A bit offended, I returned home and set out on an internet search to view these newer charts and compare for my own reference. I someone stumbled on a morbidly obese little girl and read about her. It was obvious that half the free world was making fun or her. There were little .gif images made up of her doing a happy dance in a sitting position. I won't post that here because I don't agree with it, but finding her led me to a talk show episode where her mother had appeared sharing that she didn't understand how it came to be that her daughter was so heavy. There were also other parents with overweight children on the same show. The host who shall remain unnamed because it ticked me off so badly said to one mother, "C'mon...All we have to do is look at YOU to SEE what is wrong with your daughter." I about fell out of my chair. This mother was overweight, and it was obvious what this host was saying straight to her face.

It was at that moment that I realized while I was smiling and happily discussing the size of my toddler's hands and feet with strangers who commented the possibility of them picturing the two of us now in this corner chowing down on crap was highly likely. It really saddened me to realize this because nothing was further from the truth. The way I looked was now impacting what people believed about him.

Today this child is 5 years old and his weight gain has slowed while his height has continued onward on the same curve. At our last pediatric visit I received praise on accomplishing this and was asked, "So, what are 'we' doing different mom?" The idiot didn't have much to say when I shared I was doing nothing different other than to tell me to continue to withhold fruits because they are nutritionally void. Can you even believe that? I told him I have never and will never withhold fruit unless medically necessary. He is simply a big boy with big hands and big feet and big square shoulders/frame. I feed all my children the same. I've decided to listen to all the mothers I encounter who share stories of their boys being the same way who reassuringly share that today that child is 6'4" with a healthy weight.

Feeding them all the same seems to be what people question, however, when they see me. They don't realize that they are my priority and I've placed myself last on that large list of priorities. We'll go into my eating habits soon, but for now, we are discussing what people think.

When you see an obese person with non-rail-thin children, do you automatically assume they all eat the same and are all eating junk. Do  you think that they must be terrible parents?

Yet Another Confirmation and Incorrect Assumption

Fast forward a few years, about 5 years, and I'm newly pregnant with my final, surprise, baby.  I'm only about 10 weeks into the pregnancy at this point also and slightly showing, but just prior to discovering this pregnancy, I HAD been looking at my reflection wondering where this pot belly had come from.  One night, while sitting on the commode, I bent over to retrieve the roll of paper that had fallen leaning sideways.  I felt a very sharp pain in my lower back that caused me to gasp aloud. No big deal. I finished my task and went on my way.  That evening while visiting my mother, I could not bend over to put on my shoes due to pain.  I told her what had happened earlier, but she had to put my shoes on me and tie them for me.  I then drove 1.5 hours home with my 2 children sleeping in the backseat.  When I arrived home, I could not swing my legs out of the car due to the pain and had to turn my entire body in unison with the direction in which I desired my legs to go.  I did manage to carry the children into their beds.  It seemed the pain was at its worst when I was bent at the lower back in some manner.  Anyway, that evening, I experienced the worst pain I had ever experienced, and having delivered all 3 of my children naturally (at that point only 2 of them), I can honestly share it was at least 30 times worse than the transitional stages of hard labor.  My back was spasming so severely it arched my back and caused me to moan while clenching my teeth, curling my toes, and digging my fingernails into the palms of my hands in a fist.  I endured this all night with the spasms coming around every 40 minutes.  The following morning as I tried to leave my bed, I could not get up. Instead, I rolled out of bed onto my hands and knees figuring I could crawl to the bathroom, but I soon discovered as I sat there on all fours crying, that I could not even lift a leg in the knee forward movement required for crawling. My husband had to peel me off the floor as I yelled in agony and help me to the restroom. From there we went to the emergency room.  The ER could not perform any x-rays on me due to the pregnancy and instead offered up some Vicodin, Tylenol No. 3, and muscle relaxers to my horror.  I had never even taken ibuprofen or acetaminophen for a headache while pregnant.  They offered me 3 Vicodin as I leaned against the guerney I was unable to sit upon while looking at the floor in my slightly bent over position because I could no longer stand straight up, and I took only 1.  It worked well enough to get me home. I spent days awake and sleeping in a chair with pillows propped all around me allowing me to keep my lower back bent in more of a fetal position until I scored an appointment as a new patient with a chiropractor. Ahhh....the chiropractor...offender #2.

How can this be offender #2 you might be thinking?  The answer is because his pot shot didn't come my way until well after I had actually delivered the baby. I had been seeing him at least once a week since this incident because I went from enduring a posture-distorting pregnancy to carrying an infant for almost 2 years after the delivery. Carrying children causes you to tuck your hips forward to compensate for the extra weight you are carrying out front, and this exacerbated my ever-lingering, still-undiagnosed back condition. I could feel when it was ready to flare into torture mode and had to learn a new way of doing things to compensate for it.

One day while resting face down on the chiropractor's table, having spent enough time contemplating the predicament I was in with having to guard my back and the need to exercise, I shared a few things with him out loud, such as, "If only I could find about 2 hours a day to pay attention to myself." Loving to laugh like I do, I jokingly also said with a laugh, "I don't understand how it got this bad. I swear I probably sit down on my own couch in my own house about once a week." He listened silently.

As I'm checking out at the front desk, he suddenly asks me, "Have you looked at what you are eating?" Not seeing the following statement of his coming, I answered, "What do you mean?"

Drumroll....."Ya know...like chips, ice cream, etc.?" This said looking me directly in the eye as if what he said needed to be said by him and heard by me.

I was speechless, embarrassed, hurt, confused, and angry all in one. Had he not been treating me for 2 years at this point? He surely could see my limited range of motion in my back, the cutest and pudgiest baby sitting atop my husband's lap in the waiting room, along with my other 2 children out there, and he knew the nature of my business and the fact that my husband and I worked opposite shifts. How could he not have heard me? I mean really HEAR me? It was obvious he thought I was making excuses for being fat and had no idea I hadn't even possessed an ice cream carton or bag of chips in my home in years and years.

Seeing how I still needed his services and he seemed to work miracles on my back, while seemingly ignoring the fact that it was HE who told me my lower spine was 7 degrees past its normal curvature, and I absolutely LOVED that bed with the rollers built in that massaged my back in a dimly lit room I would have paid rent to use every day for the relaxation and brief naps it afforded me, I continued on with treatment with him, but I avoided the small talk ever aware of what he REALLY thought.
 
Have you had someone incorrectly assume you eat a bunch of junk or too much as being the reason you are fat?

From Feeling Fat to Having It Confirmed By Strangers

I've pretty much grown up feeling fat from about 8th grade and the age of 13-14 on.  Prior to that, I can't say I ever remember giving it a passing thought.  For some reason when looking down at my thighs from my own personal vantage point and comparing them to those girls sitting next to me, they just always looked huge compared to theirs.  I still think I have big kneecaps...definitely nothing dainty about them...and I still look down at my thighs and feel they are huge--only now they definitely are.

My mother spent many moments imparting her life wisdom, which fell on deaf ears, but as with most things mom tried to share as I matured, I disregarded it.  I'm the type of person who has to experience everything before I truly hear what someone tried to tell me.  She used to say, "Trust me...One day you will WISH you were THIS fat."  As I spent my teen years, which I now affectionately refer to as the banging-body years, living on a lake only revealing my bathing-suit-clad body from under a super-sized T-shirt or towel long enough to either jump into the water or to jump out of the water, she would tell me I should feel more secure and flaunt what she referred to as my hourglass figure.

One advantage to being almost 5'8" tall is that I rarely looked my actual weight.  While I felt fat, people guessed me under where I actually hit the scale.  For example, when I weighed 150 pounds, my husband guessed me at about 115 pounds, and his brother called me a liar when for the SINGLE time in my life I tried to just say the number I feared to hear out loud.  No, my husband isn't lying to me. We can speak openly about everything. He's my best friend. Even today, he guesses me at about 20 pounds less than I am. I've always kept my actual weight a secret, until now, but you all don't know me.  I'm just typing in a blog that nobody is reading yet.

Well, it was after I started my family that I received my first pot-shot from my child's pediatrician.  My first child weighed 22 pounds at the age of 1 and was so thin you could actually see his skeletal system and the ligaments moving under his skin as he moved various limbs here and there. I was a skinny kid myself (see below), and my husband used to look like he was starving as a teen he was so thin, so I tried to not worry about my youngster. He ate nutritionally, so I figured he had two parents who were skinny kids affecting his weight. 

When he turned 2 and had only gained 1 pound that whole next year, comparing with other kids who had at least gained a few, I wondered.  It wasn't until he turned 3 years old and had again only gained 1 more pound, now putting him at a gain of 2 pounds in 2 years from the age of 1 to the age of 3, that I sat with my husband in the exam room for his well child exam while holding my 10-month-old daughter in my arms that I asked, "You sure that's okay that he's only gained 2 pounds in 2 years?" 

The doctor slowly looked up at us, looked at my beanpole child, carefully looked both my husband and I over slowly, and said, "Sure he's fine.  Just look at his Dad.  He just takes after his Dad is all."

I don't think my husband heard it.  Can you hear it?  I walked out of that visit in what I consider semi-fit shape with a postpregnancy pooch of a belly exaggerated with the I'm-holding-a-20-pound-child lean back pushing the pooch forward thinking "What the hell?"

My husband looked perplexed when I said, "Why the hell would he say THAT?" and he asked me for clarification.  This set me off with statements such as, "Does he think I've just ALWAYS been fat?" and "I was a skinny kid too that SOB." 

How dare he assume I've just always looked the way I did at that very moment? I weighed about 180 pounds at the time, having only gained about 10 pounds since my wedding day.

There you have it, pot shot #1, but I still didn't panic then. I tried to think I just needed to not be holding a baby with that pooch-inducing baby lean the next time I asked that question.  I had 2 young children I'd do anything for, that I enjoyed every minute with....I'd lose that slight and hardly noticeable gain later, right?

Have you ever had someone make a comment that is way off base and insulting when you didn't feel you fit the bill at that time?

Why Else Could I Be Fat?

What else can it be other than I just plain eat too much, eat crappy, and am lazy? 

The ONLY explanation there can be in the eyes of society is that too many calories enter my body, period, and this sadly means assumptions are made that I'm holed up in a corner with a bag of chips and a gallon of ice cream, possibly combining the two for an extra-special-super-empty-calorie-packed snack, catching the drips of melted ice cream running down my chin with a spoon and giggling to myself as I ravenously slurp it off the spoon from both sides.

WRONG! But what else can it be you may ask? I'll only discuss how I've come to be Fat.  My reasons are nonmedical and are in fact self-imposed, and yet none of them are excuses. Imagine that.  I have, however, excused things--there is a difference.

Definition of "excuse:"  to offer an apology for; seek to remove the blame of

I don't apologize to anyone for my Fatness other than myself.  I blame nobody but myself.  The deal is the reasons I'm Fat aren't what society believes them to be.  My Fatness has also not changed the person I am.  I am the same person I was when I weighed 129 pounds 19 years ago who today weighs 223 pounds at 5'8" tall, only older. The looks, the assumptions, and the attitudes, however, are much different.

Question Number 1:  Why are Fat people Fat?