Pregnant and obese: “I was forced to take a gestational diabetes test twice even though I had nothing”

My weight began to be considered problematic during my teenage years. Before that, everything was fine. My body conformed to social standards for a little girl. But when I was 12, my mother died of cancer. And I, to protect myself from mourning and pain, took refuge in food. Between eating disorders and yo-yoing on the scale, I was in conflict with my body until I was 32. Two decades.

If I sometimes received comments about my weight from the people I saw, from my family, from my boyfriends at the time or from any doctor I consulted (even for simple angina I was told about my weight), I didn’t care at all.

It hit me, of course, but I managed to detach myself pretty well from what was in my face. I learned to accept my body, I did therapy to learn to live with the absence of my mother, it was a lot of psychological work. My weight wasn’t changing, but I was at peace with it. Until the day I met the man who would become my husband and the desire to have children with him reared its head.

Medical fatphobia even before getting pregnant

I remember it as if it were yesterday: I was about to turn 30, and I was lying on my gynecologist’s auscultation table, with my legs apart, with a speculum in my vagina, with the doctor’s head in the center, while he looked at my cervix , during a routine consultation.

He was trying to make me think of something else, since the moment wasn’t the most pleasant. We were talking about my love life, about this new boy I had met and was very much in love with, about our wedding plan…

And I told him that we were thinking about starting to conceive a child. The doctor chuckled and blurted out: “ Wow, given your obesity, it will take you years to have a baby. It would be better to start now, This won’t be fun! “.

This idiot was throwing it at me, his dirty head still between my thighs, staring at the inside of my vagina, as if nothing had happened. I was amazed. So shocked that I didn’t respond.

I never went back to see it again. And two months later I got pregnant with my first child.

A first pregnancy attempted by fathophobic thoughts

Pregnancy was not a good time. Between nausea, tiredness and low blood pressure, I really didn’t like it. I never imagined that this moment would be the most fabulous. When you’re an orphan you learn to no longer expect anything great from life, it’s part of the game. I was experiencing this pregnancy without my family – my father had also died a few years earlier – but my husband was very present, strong. Luckily.

Psychologically, I had difficulty projecting myself as a future mother, as I lacked my own. It was a pretty intense moment, but I tried to be strong and complain as little as possible. In the first three months from a medical point of view there were no problems. The medical staff treated me like any other patient, I was not subject to thoughts about my weight.

Until the day I had to enroll in the maternity ward. I had considered the one at Les Bluets in Paris, due to his reputation. But after a consultation there, I was rejected, very coldly. The reason ? My BMI – Body Mass Index, Editor’s note — I was just over 38 years old. At the time I was 1.72 m tall and weighed 110 kg. They couldn’t take care of me, I was considered a high risk patient and they didn’t have the necessary equipment to take care of me. What equipment are we talking about? Still do not know. Maybe a freight elevator? I was disgusted.

The fact remains that they directed me to the Trousseau maternity ward, level 3, suitable for so-called “complicated” or “at risk” pregnancies. I thought that, apart from the classic pregnancy problems, I was doing well, in reality I was considered in a completely different way and I took the blame for it.

Dismissive medical staff

During these nine months I had been in excellent shape, medically speaking. The blood tests were perfect and I didn’t even have gestational diabetes, although according to the doctors it was impossible not to have it at my weight. I also had to take drug tests twice because they thought the results were fake. No offense to them, I had nothing.

I could also, at every quarterly ultrasound, have horrible thoughts about my body. For example, the sonographer in charge of my follow-up pressed hard on my belly to pass the probe, blowing and moaning very loudly, whispering “ how do you expect me to see something with all this fat? ! “.

I walked out of there with bruises on my stomach and my spirits were low. The sonographer told me that she couldn’t be 100% sure that my baby was okay, as her vision was ” unclear due to fat mass ” AND ” they I shouldn’t have complained if my daughter had a condition at birth that she couldn’t detect because of my weight. “.

A few months later, after requesting an epidural for my future birth, I had to meet with the hospital anesthetist during my last prenatal visits. The latter had to check my latest blood tests and look at my back, to see if the puncture between the vertebrae was possible. Before even examining me, he sat down at the desk and said to me: “ I know I won’t be able to anesthetize you for the birth, you probably have too much fat on your back. You need to prepare to give birth without an epidural “.

But for the sake of conscience, he kept walking around his little desk to look at my spine and finally said, ” ah no, that’s okay, your back isn’t that big “. After this emotional relief and the violence of his words, I left the consultation in tears.

A complicated birth, but unrelated to weight

I had a complicated birth. While I had been promised a possible premature birth for months due to my obesity, my son had to be induced three days after he was due. Induction – inserting a balloon into my vagina to force the cervix open, plus oxytocin infusions – was doing nothing and my son was starting to get tired, his heart rate slowing too much.

But lo and behold, after an emergency c-section, there he was and all was well. During my stay in the maternity ward I did not feel any thoughts about my weight. Nobody cared, the only thing the doctors cared about was my son’s health. And luckily he was doing very well.

Medical fatphobia during miscarriage

After severe postpartum depression that tormented me for 3 years, my husband and I decided to have a second child, five years after my first birth. And like during my first pregnancy, I got pregnant in two months. But this pregnancy was different, I felt it, without knowing how to explain it. There was something wrong. After just 6 weeks I went to the maternity ward due to severe bleeding. Bottom line: I had a miscarriage. It was happening, I knew it.

I hadn’t planned this new pregnancy enough yet to be very affected, but I was still very upset. But what hurt me more, besides the loss of an embryo? The reflection of the hospital intern, who gives me a prescription to calm my uterine pain while my body finished expelling what should have been my future child:

Thanks for the guilt. After crying my eyes out, after cursing all these doctors who see me as an anomaly, after venting all my anger, I decided it was over. I wouldn’t let any other thoughts pass.

I was a person, not a piece of meat. My body had proven it: my weight didn’t matter. Yes, I was obese. I knew it. I didn’t need to be reminded, I was perfectly aware of it. I wanted kindness, tolerance and I promised myself that in the future I would never again allow anyone to humiliate me by judging me for being overweight.

A final pregnancy, completely normal

Two months after my miscarriage, I got pregnant again. To everyone’s surprise (starting with mine), I only gained 6 kilos during this pregnancy. 6kg was nothing. And I don’t know if the mindset changed between the birth of my son and my daughter, but I didn’t have any thoughts about my weight.

I didn’t have to take a gestational diabetes test twice (I hadn’t had one yet) and the anesthetist, who wasn’t the same person, didn’t threaten me with not being able to get an epidural. My son also arrived by caesarean section, full term and in great shape.

And a strange thing happened, which I still can’t explain to myself (and neither can the doctors for that matter): since I returned from the maternity ward, that is almost three years ago: I lost weight. Not worryingly, not enough to question the doctors, but I’m losing patience. All this weight I’ve accumulated since I was 12 is coming off, gradually, without me doing anything. My blood tests are perfect, nothing to report, but I’m already minus 40 kilos on the scale.

Today, if I can give one piece of advice to anyone who experiences fatphobic thoughts during (or outside) pregnancy from doctors, it is this: if you can, if you’re not in a medical wilderness, get out of there. Change professionals as soon as you are mistreated. You don’t have to bear these thoughts.

You know your situation, you know your body, you know what it is. No one should put you down by judging you based on your weight, making you rot because of it. Maybe one day you will lose it, or maybe not, but there is no reason for people to mistreat you with words or gestures. Your body is yours, fat or not, pregnant or not. Break up, change doctors, shout if you can so that he doesn’t start saying bad things to others again.

Discover BookClub, Madmoizelle’s show that questions society through books, in the company of those who make them.