Keeping up with the preg-fashions

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'Preg-fashions' should be pronounced to rhyme with Kardashians, otherwise it's not funny.

Many things follow trends. Fashion, music, movies, and hairstyles all change seemingly with the wind. What was in yesterday is out today, but rest assured it will be back by the time your kids are teenagers. One thing that I firmly believe should not follow trends is medicine. More specifically, the advice given to pregnant women should not change with the wind. In theory at least, the sage wisdom being doled out by doctors is at some level based on the science of the human body. Don't get me wrong, I believe in evolution, I just don't think we are evolving so drastically with every generation that we need to completely revamp all of the pregnancy books every 15 years.

I first started thinking about this after my most recent OB appointment last week. Buried somewhere on page 2 of my list of questions for my doctor was, "How much weight should I gain?" His recommendation was 15-25 lbs total. Thanks to my compulsive online shopping habit and the kindness of some wonderful friends I now posses a comprehensive pregnancy book library, and every single one of those books recommends gaining 25-35 lbs. I mentioned that to my doctor and he said, "Oh yeah, that's outdated advice. Now we know there's really no reason to gain that much weight."

I did further research and discovered that starting in the 80's doctors first started recommending a gain of 25-35 lbs for women with a "normal" BMI and 28-40 lbs for women with a "low" BMI. (I'll spare you my opinions on BMI as a measure of health.) Prior to this, women were told to gain 15-25 lbs! Basically society knows as much about pregnancy weight gain as we do about bell bottoms. In middle school, I really wished that my mom had saved her bell bottoms. Now I wish she saved her maternity clothes!

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After substantial googling on pregnancy advice trends, the only reasonable conclusion I can reach is that it really sucked to be pregnant during the 80's. It would seem that this was the only time in history where the medical field condemned you for 1 glass of wine, essentially mandated that you start exclusively wearing your husband's sweatpants at 4 months, and shamed you for any physical activity that wasn't walking to the fridge. While I appreciate all of the research it takes to flipflop advice every few years, it seems virtually impossible to tell your body how much weight to gain anyways or we would all look like Giselle.

I haven't taken a bump picture yet this week so I'll leave you with a creepily captured snapshot of me and my new pillow. It's supposed to help with back pain as well as keep you on your side since it is not currently trendy to back or stomach sleep while pregnant. It also serves as a fortress to prevent aggressive sleepers from infringing on your bed side territory! It occurs to me that G might have secretly taken this photo so he could list the pillow on Ebay.