Cried in public today: weight gain w no bump, body image and small baby

I fully cried at target today.

TW: mention of weight

I’m 25 weeks pregnant with my first. History of body image issues and ED (a decade ago now). My weight has fluctuated a lot as an adult - highest I’ve seen post college is 192, lowest I’ve seen is 164. Pre pregnancy I was around 170/175. Not sure.

At my appointment Monday I was 203. Seeing that “2” was jarring to say the least. I’m 5’9 and haven’t really changed how I was eating THAT much. I teach 3 group fitness classes per week so I’m fairly active.

To make it worse, I don’t look pregnant. I don’t have a pregnant belly but I know I’ve gained 25-30 lbs.

It’s messing with my mental health a lot. My clothes don’t fit, I don’t look pregnant, but I look huge. I know I’ve gained weight. And it feels like there’s nothing I can do about it.

On top of that, my hemoglobin was 7 and ferritin was <4. My baby went from 30th %tile at 20 weeks to 17th %tile at 24 weeks. So she’s small.

My belly is small.

My baby is small.

I’m huge.

We leave for our babymoon on Saturday (beach vacation) and I tried on some of my clothes today to see what I wanted to pack and even my backup “safe” items didn’t fit. Even the few maternity items I bought look terrible.

My husband took me to target to buy some new things and everything was ugly or just wouldn’t look good on my body so I just cried.

I feel guilty too because I’m having a little girl. I want her to love her body in a way I didn’t and wasn’t modeled to me.

How am I supposed to make it another 16 weeks and however many more pounds?! How do people with body image issues do this?