Bumpaholics Anonymous

Hello, My name is the The Baby Bump Project and I'm a Bumpaholic.

It wasn't long before a new annoying term about pregnancy would enter the cultural zeitgeist.
'Bumpaholic' is the concoction of Women's Health magazine (US) in which they discuss women who love being pregnant. Apparently, some women love being pregnant so much that they are having babies strictly for their own narcissistic pleasure: they crave the adoration from other people and feel more 'liberated' (don't even get me started on how much I hate the way that this term is misused) by their pregnancy curves.

Aside from the fact that 'bumpaholic' is a nauseating term, I would have to say that I wholeheartedly dispute the perception that the reason for a rising birth rate is because women love being pregnant so much. First of all, I think most women would agree that if you work full-time as a stay-at-home-mum or in paid employment, having lots of children is not easy unless you have money to burn on hired help. Secondly, I get super annoyed by 'I love being pregnant because I can eat anything I want' myth that is continuously perpetuated when it is so ridiculously clear that today, eating 'anything you want' in pregnancy is a cultural/medical no-no. In light of moral panics about obesity, I think you can ask any woman and she will tell you that the days of 'eating for two' are well and truly over. As I found in my own research, the majority of women I interviewed felt 'fat' at every stage of pregnancy and post-birth and while these women by no means 'hated' being pregnant, they certainly were not eating whatever they could get their hands on. Pregnancy was far from 'liberating' when it came to body image.

I think it's kind of odd to say that women are having more babies because they are obsessed with being pregnant rather than making the quite reasonable assumption that a woman is having more than one child because...she likes children? or loves being a mum? Feel free to correct me, but pregnancy isn't a walk in the park. I think that while many women do enjoy pregnancy, many other women merely look at pregnancy as just a hurdle to overcome for the sake of the really precious outcome. I mean seriously, why would women give birth at all considering the pain that often accompanies it? Clearly, the end utterly and completely justifies the means!

Does this mean we need a new 12 step program? I can see it now: Bumpaholics Anonymous.

Pre-conception care: useful or a crock?

In an interesting study recently published in the British Medical Journal, it seems that women of childbearing age in the UK (20-34 years old) are less likely to follow pre-pregnancy recommendations such as decreasing the consumption of alcohol, taking folic acid supplements and quitting smoking. Of the 12, 445 women in the study, only 2.9% were taking folic acid supplements and having fewer than 4 drinks per week three month before conception. The authors of the study pin this down to young women being less inclined to want to change their pre-pregnancy lifestyles. The authors also suggest that public health messages about pre-conception care are not getting to women. I wonder if it's really just a lack of appropriate communication of public health messages or if women are just actively resisting the overly prescriptive rules and regulations surrounding pregnancy (from pre-conception to post-birth). Increasingly, women are being told to treat their bodies as if they could be pregnant at any time and I think this fits in nicely with all of the moral panics about motherhood and fertility for young women in their 20s.

I'm interested as to whether any of you following pre-conception care closely or if you think it's all a load of bollocks?

Source: British Medical Journal, Online First, February 13, 2009.

Eating for two: it's harder than you think

And just when you thought pregnant could not possibly get more complicated.

So, for a long time scientists have been wanking on about how women need to continually remind themselves that when they are pregnant they are certainly not 'eating for two'. Newspapers have been blazing with headlines about women programming their foetuses for obesity if they even look at a block of chocolate.

Well. Now, it seems that according to new research from Dr. Helen Budge of Nottingham University, pregnant women who eat too little can also program their foetuses for obesity. Having too few calories in the womb inflames fat cells and this inflammation 'damages' the body's ability to metabolise properly. Thus, foetuses are at greater risk for obesity later in life.

Right. And how did Dr. Budge come to this conclusion?

By testing sheep. That's right. SHEEP.

And her solution? Budge says women must eat a 'healthy, balanced diet'.

How in the world are women supposed to know what 'healthy' or 'balanced' is anymore if science keeps moving the bloody goal posts?

Source: http://tinyurl.com/6ogava