
What were you worried about at your first antenatal appointment? The health of your baby? Whether those two faint lines really meant you were pregnant or whether some mistake had been made? How you’d cope with morning sickness and tiredness?
I was worried about all those things too, I imagine everyone is, but there was one other thing that drew heavily on my thoughts. One other thing that made me fidget with nervousness while I waited in the surgery feigning interest in a not-often seen copy of House and Garden Magazine.
One other thing that admittedly is difficult to admit as it sounds so trivial, so flippant, but I wonder, years on if I would actually feel the same if time constricted and I was there right now.
Would the doctor want to weight me?

That’s what occupied my mind.
How would this pregnancy appointment thing work I wondered. Would there be weekly weigh-ins to see how the baby was progressing? Would I be donning a hospital gown and stepping on a scale on a regular basis in front of a medical professional?
The idea of it made my already off- feeling stomach constrict.
It was, you see, a scenario very familiar to me and not one I was keen to revisit.
I spent years battling an eating disorder so stepping on scales was nothing new.
A decade before I was sitting in that waiting room, scales were something I saw as an essential part of my life. They were either a conduit to success or a deep tunnel towards failure, each number a victory or a deep disappointment.