The Hunger Games (but in a more literal way . . . without the bloodshed)

I am starting to understand why weight gain can get out of control during pregnancy.

According to the scale, my weight gain is just fine. Because I started my pregnancy with a high BMI, a healthy pregnancy for me means gaining less than the average amount. I have been diligently watching the scale to make sure that I'm not gaining weight too fast or too much. I have my personalized weight gain goals from my midwife, and so far I've stayed within the recommended range. So far.

But what I've noticed is that something dramatic has happened in the last week. I can't seem to get full anymore. I will eat what used to be a normal breakfast and immediately think, "Well, what else can I eat in order to stop being so hungry?" It's like the food isn't even getting to my stomach.

This is certainly the case with anything "normal-sized" that I make at home. If I go out to eat and eat a big, restaurant portion, I will get full. But if I try to just eat small portions, snacks, etc at home, I will feel almost exactly as hungry as I did before eating anything at all. Either that, or I will think that I am full, but will actually be famished again within two hours.

Let's look at today as an example.

I woke up at 4am and couldn't get back to sleep. This wouldn't be such a horrible problem if it had been a weekday and I had to be up at 5am anyway, but today was a Saturday. I'm not supposed to be up at 4am on a Saturday. Anyway, I tried to stay in bed for as long as possible, convincing myself that if I didn't leave the bed, I would be able to fall back asleep. Eventually, I had to get up and eat, though, so I did. Since it was early in the morning and I wanted to get back in bed, I didn't eat too much -- just some toast to settle my stomach. The toast silenced the "MUST HAVE FOOD NOW" alarm that was going off in my head, but didn't actually fill me up. I was fine with this, though, because my main objective was to silence the alarm and get back in bed. I was hungry, but I was able to ignore the urge to eat and pay attention to the urge to sleep.

Within a few hours, though, I was still unable to get to sleep and now no longer able to ignore the alarm. I went downstairs and ate a large portion of soup. Even after finishing it, I was still hungry, but we were planning to go out to eat with some of Ben's family for lunch, so I tried to ignore the feeling again. I didn't want to eat three meals before lunch. But by the time that we were leaving for the restaurant, I had to eat a few Thin Mints on my way out the door because I was so hungry I worried that if there was even a modest wait that I would start to lose my humanity in front of respectable restaurant patrons.

When we got to the restaurant, I ate a sandwich, a pickle, a large cup of coleslaw and 1.5 latkes. I felt full -- full enough that I left most of my bun on my plate -- but not regrettably full. Normally, I would have probably eaten the same amount of food (sandwiches and latkes just aren't as good as leftovers as they are right there in the restaurant), but I would have felt as though I should have stopped about halfway through. Instead, I felt fine. Full and good.

The lunch ended around 2pm and I didn't really start to feel hungry again until 5:30. At that time, I started to think about food, but got distracted enough that I didn't hear the "MUST HAVE FOOD NOW" alarm until 7pm. At that point, I heated up some hearty leftover chili. After a bowl of that, I thought that I was done for the evening. But two hours later, I was famished again.

So here I am at nearly 11pm, eating a tuna salad and crackers when all I really want to be doing is going to sleep for the night. And I won't be able to go to sleep as soon as I'm done either, since lying down right after eating gives me heartburn. And I've just eaten the last bite of the tuna and I'm not full enough to be able to trust that I'll be able to actually coax myself to sleep before the next hunger alarm goes off. So I may still have one more late-night snack that I'll have to do before I can really get myself to sleep.

The most frustrating part of all this is that food isn't really all that appealing. It's not normal hunger that makes you want food. Instead, I want to be doing other things. Like sleeping. But instead I have to plan more and more of my day around my ability to procure nourishment. Eating small frequent meals doesn't seem to do much -- I feel almost as hungry as when I started, so it's terribly unsatisfying, and there's only so many options for food that can be furtively consumed when you are teaching a room full of middle-schoolers. But eating bigger meals only tricks me into thinking that the problem will be solved, when really it only sometimes works. The rest of the time, it's only a temporary fix and then I end up ridiculously hungry again -- as though the first meal didn't even count.

Anyway, I have yet to see how all this eating is going to affect my weight gain, but I can only assume that this is why most women typically gain the bulk of their weight during this last part of the pregnancy. I am certainly going to keep trying to maintain a healthy and slow gain, but if this hunger keeps up I'm not sure I'm going to be as happy with my daily hops onto the scale as I have been.