Find Out How Much Your Baby Weighs in Big Macs, Thanks to This Handy New Site
April 24, 2019
While Nickey Winkelman, a stand-up comedian from Columbus, Ohio, was pregnant with her first L.O. last year, she felt like she was being lectured to eat a certain way. "Right away, you see these charts that compare your baby to fruits and vegetables, and most of them just taught me of vegetables I had never heard of before," she tells Parents.com. "I had never seen a kabocha squash, and I still don’t know what a jicama is. I kept thinking to myself that I couldn’t really get an accurate picture on what size they are. Like heirloom tomatoes to me are all different sizes!"
Plus, the onslaught of fruits and veggie visuals only made Winkelman feel guilty about her diet. "It made me feel bad that I wasn’t eating healthier while I was pregnant," she says. "I didn’t want to be staring at a chart full of leafy greens when the only thing my body was craving was burgers."
In the midst of this, she joked with her son's father Gabriel Guyer that they should make a chart that compares the baby's size to Big Macs instead. They even went so far as to get a Big Mac and weigh it to create a running joke. "Throughout the pregnancy, every time I would reach a new week, I would post something on my Facebook, like, 'My baby is this many Big Macs!'" Winkelman shares.
Then, because Guyer is a web designer, he decided to make a website for Winkleman and other moms who might want to compare their little one's size to the popular fast-food burger. The "How Many Big Macs Is My Baby?" site debuted right around their son Flynn's first birthday in March, and it's quickly becoming a viral sensation.
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Winkelman has even gotten positive feedback from surprising sources. "A friend who is in med school to be a pediatrician was like, 'I can’t wait to share this with my patients!'" she says. "He thought it was funny, and a few of his friends on Facebook commented and said, 'I wish I had this when I was pregnant!' And some people have said, 'I wonder how many chicken nuggets my baby is!'"
The proud new mom shares that a week after her baby boy was born, she and Guyer took their son on a special field trip. "We stopped for a Big Mac after his first pediatrician visit," she shares. "He was 8 pounds, 1 oz.—or 16 Big Macs!"
Winkelman hopes the site encourages expectant moms to let go of perfectionism. "I told myself from the moment I saw those two pink lines that I was going to have a fit pregnancy," she tells Parents.com. "And then, my body just had other plans. I got every illness that was available in the air. I got strep throat, bronchitis, the flu, I got kidney stones around week 20. Exercising was not gonna happen. There were days I was lucky to get out of bed. It's wonderful when you see these moms that are able to keep exercising and have wonderful, healthy diets, but I just remember thinking the most important thing is for me to keep my stress low, because I don't wanna put any stress on the baby."
So, she decided to listen to her body, have fun, and give into her cravings.
"I decided to just take care of myself the best way I could, [figuring] that's what's going to be best for my baby," she says. Sure enough, Flynn was born healthy and continues to be even happier and healthier—whether he's weighed in pounds or Big Macs!
