Belly Laughs_ The Naked Truth About Pregnancy and Childbirth - Jenny McCarthy [22]
Let me break it down in a little more detail for you. My entire face was filled with little zitty bumps. There wasn’t one open space of good face. To top it all off, I had a red rash that circled each side of my nose down to the middle of each cheek. I was afraid that people who always saw me airbrushed for work would faint at the sight of me. Now, you might be thinking, “That’s so vain.” My answer to that is “Bite me.” I’m human, and no one likes to be pointed to and laughed at. Because people really were pointing and laughing!
You think that movie critics are harsh, but I find that the public is worse than critics. I’ve actually had people walk up to me on the street and say, “God you look SO much better on TV.” Even though that might be true, no one wants to hear this kind of thing! This just multiplied my fears.
The infamous “pregnancy mask” (called melasm . . . I know because I actually looked it up) is another thing to be feared among pregnant women, though I think stretch marks would win the vote for most feared skin problem (see page 77). The rash that I had was called rosacea. I’m sure you’ve seen the commercial about it. The medicine you take for it causes wet farts. Lovely.
Whether you get the mask or my particular rash, the key to hiding it is obvious: Wear a shitload of make-up or stop caring. Yeah, right. As if that’s easy to do. Still, and as always, there’s a bright side: These things definitely go away after your little chicken hatches. As a matter of fact, my skin totally rocks right now. If you see me on the street, you can make fun of my jiggly ass, but not my smooth skin.
It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! . . . No, It’s a Really Swollen Pregnant Lady!
(Water Retention)
A s you now know, I wanted to avoid every miserable thing that happens when you’re pregnant, but the swelling was one thing I particularly hoped to dodge. It just really scared me; like with getting fat, people can notice swelling, but unlike with fat, and depending on what body parts swell, you sometimes can’t even hide it with clothing. Let’s be honest—whether you make your living with your appearance and mediagenic-ness or not, swelling is every woman’s nightmare. And looking back on it, I can see that I was worried for very good reason.
I could tell from the nurse’s expression every time I went for a checkup that I was gaining more weight than I was “supposed” to. They told me I was starting to retain water. At first, you just feel like your belly looks bloated. And good for you for noticing because it is. But then, you notice that your rings are hurting your fingers. You notice that your skin is puffing up around the rings and so you decide to take them off “for a while.” Well, kiss them good-bye, sister. Put them in a safe place; once they are off, you’re not going to see your rings on until after you deliver or perhaps later than that. I couldn’t put my rings back on until my baby was two months old. In and of itself, a little less jewelry isn’t a very big deal. Except when little old men and women stare at your pregnant belly and your naked ring finger. They’re putting two and two together and deciding right then and there that you’re a total hussy. On more than one occasion, I wanted to show them my naked middle finger!
The next thing to go was my butt. Before the army of cellulite invaded, I noticed about four new inches hanging off my tail side. It was like a tray—you could place an entire TV dinner on my ass. Despite the obvious, I managed to convince myself that having “back” (as the song goes) was totally in and that I was safely in fashion. Wow! Mother Nature has a way of helping us fatties fool ourselves, doesn’t she? I had a friend who, after she’d gained a good forty pounds on her belly