I’m feeling heated, not a common occurrence for me. But, hey, I’ve got hormones raging through me like the Colorado River. Back up and watch out.

You don’t want to mess with this. Or I don’t know, maybe you do.

My reason for being so damn jacked? GD stupid preggo message boards. I really should know better. I avoid message boards like the plague in everyday life, but see. Something happens when you’re preg and you forget things you normally keep a 1000 mile distance from and you start looking up every damn thing.

I’ve been a bit on the ridiculous side about that. I’ve been Googling like I’m a full time Google employee. I Google when I don’t even realize I’m Googling and it’s the stupidiest shit. Search: “feel sharp pain in side and am pregnant”.

These are the kinds of things that are never a good idea to look up on Google, unless you want to convince yourself that you and your baby are about to die at any moment.

But back to the message boards.

I can’t even remember how I got there, strange how that happens isn’t it? The power of the click through. Before I know it, I’m reading honest, angst written comments like such, how much weight have you gained while pregnant? I’m worried I won’t be able to lose the baby weight.

And then shit like this as the response, it is a sad sad day when a woman is more concerned with how she looks than having a HEALTHY baby. Get over yourself.

Excuse me?

I don’t think a concern for weight gain constitutes getting the shit blasted out of you about not caring about having a healthy child. Say what? How the hell can you even compare the two?!

Unfortunately, this seems to be a common theme. My faves are the ones that are prefaced with, I haven’t been pregnant before but …

Then do kindly keep your mouth shut.

It’s hard enough as women to accept and have a good body image of ourselves not pregnant. Add that into the mix, and suddenly, your every insecurity will come out, or at least play out in your mind.

If I think about the images of pregnant women as portrayed in the media, they’re praised for being so “small” and “thin” and what “a tiny bump she has!”. Not to mention the whole giving birth and looking completely normal within one month.

I know that might be highly unrealistic, but that’s the image I have of myself — that I will look exactly the same in no time. Or that I should. I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse, but I can assure you, it’s doing me more harm than good. Well, I guess I just answered my own blessing/curse statement.

Thinking about how much weight I’m going to gain and whatI’m going to look like pre, during and post baby shouldn’t be on my mind. But it is. And because I take care of myself and yes, I do care about how I look, it remains a top concern/priority/whatever you want to call it.

As women we shouldn’t be criticizing or critiquing each other — particularly when preg and in such a sensitive state!

Why aren’t we supporting each other more and saying that we understand it can be a scary thing to not know how your body is going to change and react to another living being that’s taken over?

Where’s the love?

We women run this show. We do. But I think we could run it a hell of a lot better and take shit over if we stopped with all this back and forth of criticism after criticism.

Love and support. We do those things all the time for others, now we need to channel that to each other.