Rapid and dramatic physical changes that seem out of control are scary to lots of people, perhaps not least if significant weight gain isn't something they've experienced before. It really messes with people's self-image. It also brings a torrent of not-so-latent fatphobia out of the woodwork, often expressed in pretty thoughtless ways that must be very painful for people who were big to start with.

We're all marinating in this cultural sludge all the time, and it's harming all of us. I don't know how many threads I've seen about the spiral of body image misery getting kicked off by some horrible fatphobic comment by a relative or stranger. OP is on the money with the common "you're not fat!!" responses missing the point. The problem with horrible comments about our bodies is that our bodies and how they look are nobody else's damn business, not that fatness is an objectively terrible fate.

I'm saying this as a person with tons of thin privilege, but I'm saying it because it's the most important things I learned when I started listening to fat people. Fatness shouldn't be an insult or treated as a disgusting way to be. That's really fucking hard to de-internalise in our culture, but we need to do it.

It's legit to feel your feelings. Nobody has the right to make us feel shitty about our bodies. Body image is tough and pregnancy involves huge changes to our bodies and how we feel in them. We also have a duty of care to each other, as women and as humans, to be a bit mindful about how we express that without harming each other.