Nagpagl with her book. (Photo: Durga Shakti Nagpal) If there was a book that people expected IAS Officer Durga Shakti Nagpal to write, it would have been on her crackdown on Uttar Pradesh’s sand mafia. Instead, Nagpal turns to a less obvious choice. Her experiences with pregnancy are shared with to-be mothers in Grow Your Baby, Not Your Weight. Nagpal addresses each trimester’s concerns based on her own experiences through two pregnancies, with the focus on maintaining weight while providing nourishment to the baby.
“Pregnancy is like a management project for your own self,” says Nagpal, who wrote the book in the last trimester of her second pregnancy, in July 2021. It started off with a concern about how her belly seemed relatively larger than in the previous pregnancy. She found solace in her husband’s and friend’s words. “They said that as long as your belly is fat but your arms and legs, your body are thin, it means that your baby is growing,” she recalls. A daily practice that would keep her “fit and flab free” is central to her book.
Grow Your Baby, Not Your Weight: An Extraordinary Memoir of Pregnancy, Birthing and Everything Between; Durga Shakti Nagpal; Rupa; 176 pages; Rs 295 Nagpal recounts tackling the first trimester’s nausea —“beating the ugly monster at its own game”—with tweaks to her diet regimen and morning strolls. She then devotes chapters to spine health and body weight, with the assistance of yoga asanas. There is a whole section on eradicating any possibility of stretch marks making an appearance. Nagpal says, “That is the high point of my book. I’ve not had stretch marks at all neither during my first nor during my second pregnancy. It’s not just one thing that I did. It was a package of three things.”
Food cravings and diet management, including our notorious penchant for tea, are also subjects Nagpal advises on. She stresses the importance of families and communities coming together to raise children, so that the burden doesn’t fall on a mother alone.
Nagapal’s account is bolstered by a senior gynaecologist’s insights. The author advocates against over-medicalising pregnancies yet following an OB-GYN’s advice as well as handy tips that other mothers, including one’s own, might have.
Nagpal agrees that not all mothers will relate to her experience of an uncomplicated pregnancy and vaginal delivery. Moreover, not all mothers will aspire to have the “perfect” pregnancy, even. So what if you give in to your food cravings, add a few pounds and gain some stretch marks in the process of having a baby? Nagpal says, “I’m sure that you will be proud of the fact that you are creating a human being, irrespective of whether you are able to control your pregnancy or not. But, if you decide to control and manage it so that you can have a happy, healthy you and your baby… you can.”
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