For their book, Mysko and Amadei (co-founders of Inside Beauty) surveyed more than 400 women about pregnancy and body image. Says Amadei, "I can't say we were surprised to learn that 80% expressed concern about the body changes of pregnancy, but it was startling to learn that less than 50% talk about those concerns with their friends and partners, and even fewer (less than 20%) discuss their body image issues and histories of disordered eating or eating disorder with their health care providers."

Even if they did, the health care providers pregnant women visit most often aren't necessarily trained to recognize and address body image issues and eating disorders — but they are trained to track expectant mothers' weight and instruct them to keep it within a certain range. For women who struggle with disordered eating and body dissatisfaction, that can be problematic. Amadei, a former model who was recovering from bulimia when she got pregnant, says she was unprepared for how triggering the whole experience would be. "I had recovered from my eating disorder and stopped obsessing over the numbers on the scale, but suddenly I found that everyone seemed to be interested in talking about those numbers during pregnancy. OB appointments were about getting weighed, other pregnant women wanted to compare weight gain, and new moms were eager to commiserate about post baby weight loss efforts. The fixation and worry was everywhere."

That's no surprise, says Kane, a clinical counselor and author of It's Not About the Food: A Woman's Guide to Making Peace with Food and Our Bodies . "In North America 80% of women are dissatisfied with the size and shape of their bodies when not pregnant. Since pregnancy adds much more weight to the body, one would expect much higher percentages of body dissatisfaction when women are pregnant." And although all three authors agree that body image issues come from a multitude of sources, what Mysko calls a "huge increase" in media coverage of "celebrity pregnancy, babies, and mommy makeovers" in the last decade hasn't helped.

People like to joke about how pregnancy is the one time women in this culture are allowed to eat with abandon and gain weight without shame, but Mysko and Amadei's research shows that even that's not true. Women are subjected to constant pressure to eat and weigh as little as possible, regardless of how it may affect our self-esteem, our mental health, or our pregnancies. Says Kane, "We are taught that 'thin is in' and since 97% of us aren't naturally thin, we turn against our bodies and are so self-loathing, we often don't want our partners to see us naked. I think that the pregnancy spin by the media is just a continuation of the same thing. The basic message? We're never good enough-our bodies are always in need of improvement."

The Baby Weight [Demo Dirt]

When The View returned from holiday break in early January, I noticed that Elisabeth was wearing very blouse-y tops, and occasionally donning very wide belts that covered her whole midsection. She is really into working out, and got into shape (and on the cover of Fitness) not long after she gave birth to her last baby in the fall of 2007, so I thought it was weird that she wasn't wearing her typical form-fitting outfits. I IM'd Anna a couple of weeks ago and said that I thought that Elisabeth was pregnant, and this morning, as both of us watched the show from our respective apartments, she IM'd me immediately: "YOU WERE RIGHT." I feel sharp, validated, smug and super-human for no good reason... the same way I feel after I've managed to build a piece of Ikea furniture.

Skenazy writes:

Who'd ever heard the cute-as-morning-sickness phrase "baby bump" until about 10 years ago? I hadn't, even when my own bump looked like Rachel Ray. Now the bump's right up there with the Birkin bag — an accessory every tabloid feels compelled to comment on. "Is that a baby bump?" "Proudly displaying her baby bump ... " Or sometimes it's just an arrow excitedly pointing, "The bump," — as if they've found Osama.

Skenazy thinks that we, the public, dwell on babies  not just celeb kids but our own  because "they're our hobby, our status, our conversational calling cards, our Second Lives." Well guess what, lady? Some of us do not give a shit. Sure, the Jolie-Pitt kids are cute  the adopted and biological ones  but so are so are puppies and platypi.

But there are no platypi on the cover of Us Weekly because all women are supposed to have BABY FEVER. I hate, HATE the predisposed notion that the lack of a Y chromosome means I must involuntarily drool at the sight of an infant. Cute babies are cute, but some of them look like undone suckling pigs that need to go back in the oven. This is coming from a woman with no pets and no plants, who finds it emotionally draining to be responsible for herself and is not, at this juncture of her life, in the mindset to care for another human, animal or snippet of flora. But the tabloids seem to think we all have BABY FEVER, that no woman is immune, that if you have ovaries then you're gonna want to hear about someone else's. I'm not into babies! Hopefully I would be, if they were mine, but they're not! They belong to rich people I have never met. And the only thing worse than being expected to give a crap about a random kid is giving a crap about a random maybe-possibly pregnant woman! Is it a requirement of femininity to care about celebrity children? Am I destroying the sisterhood if I don't give a fuck about Jen Garner's uterus? Why is it suddenly mandatory to be on "bump watch"? Am I the only one who just doesn't give a shit?

Our Baby Bump Obsession [NY Sun]

Lookit, I'm not one of those people that's like, "Is she pregnant or did she just eat a bagel?" I'm sensitive about body issues and if someone is a little bloated or something, it's pretty asshole-ish to assume they're pregnant. But these shots are sorta convincing.

Here's the ring that's supposed to make it all cool with Joe Simpson.