Feed the Pregnant Lady!

I have never enjoyed food so much as when I was pregnant. I spent most of my time during my pregnancies planning what I would eat next. I think most pregnant women are like this. If you want to see a person really enjoying their food, give a pregnant woman what she wants to eat and step back.
Before you have kids, you notice your food. You know what you’re eating, take in its seasoning and texture, and can savor it. Once you have kids, and for a few years after, food is about survival. You have to clothe, feed, change, bathe, and care for this other tiny being, - even suction out their nose – and you have no time to eat except for what you can hold in one hand while the other hand is busy doing something else. You forget all the advice you’ve heard about eating balanced meals because you’re busy balancing your dinner on top of your stroller because if you have to spend one more minute inside, watching your baby drool, you will be brain dead. Or at least cry, and who has time?
My midwives got after me when I was pregnant for gaining too much weight. They were concerned about high blood pressure, diabetes, and a c-section. But I was too hungry. Food was all that interested me, and I would slow down, but I was not going to suffer. I was throwing up constantly, almost never sleeping, and I felt basically rotten. I was going to eat. I didn’t care how big I got. I would diet during happier times, not then.
Some people are completely tactless with pregnant women. A person I know, one of those skinny, athletic women, was especially so with me. I spent much time and effort avoiding her because of her habit of greeting me loudly and heartily in public places with “So, how much weight have you gained now?” There I was, waddling about my own business, and suddenly this question for all to hear. I tend to be a truthful person, but I found myself wanting to lie about it. Should I tell her I’d only gained five or ten pounds and my midwife was begging me to eat a pint of Ben and Jerry’s every night so I could gain more? (My poor midwife, who spent much time extolling the value of salad bars in the hope that I wouldn’t put on another eight pounds in two weeks.) Could I get her to believe this even though I was much bigger than I had been? Maybe on such a skinny person as she was, a few pounds could make you several sizes bigger, and turn you into the Pillsbury Dough Boy. If I didn’t tell her, how would such a thin person possibly know that I was working on my thirty-eighth pound of baby weight, and would happily put on sixty if I could just stop barfing long enough? Surely anyone dumb enough to shout such a question across a crowded room would be dumb enough to believe a small weight gain. However, I could not bring myself to lie to her. Lying would mean I was giving in to her, admitting that there was something wrong with packing on the pounds like a bear about to hibernate. So I would waddle over to my skinny questioner, mutter my weight gain, and waddle away as fast as possible. A normal person would have been gracious enough to say something to me like, “You don’t look like it! You look like you only gained two pounds! You look great!” But she never did. Instead, she would stare up and down my swollen bulk, as if to figure out where every pound went, as if I were a human jigsaw puzzle waiting for a final piece. Such experiences require lipstick for morale and a second helping of chocolate cake.
So this is a plea to the non-pregnant world – let the ladies in your midst who require extra sustenance due to the alien force which has taken over their body eat whatever they want. And don’t be tactless about it. There’s plenty of time later to worry about their weight. They will thank you profusely for feeding them, and they won’t be able to even taste let alone fully chew their food for the next few years, so let them enjoy it while they can. Before they have to start suctioning out noses.