Pregnancy Weight Gain, Post-Eating Disorder

Pregnancy weight gain.  From what I hear, it's not particularly comfortable for a lot of people, eating disorder history or no.  But I think we'd be kidding ourselves if we said that ED history doesn't potentially level up the challenge.

During my first trimester, initially I lost weight (once the 10 lbs. of free fluid from OHSS finally cleared out of my abdomen) and ended up almost even, a little over baseline.  Now about four weeks into my second trimester, I seem to have hit a weight gain stride.

So that's been interesting.

It spurs an intimately familiar thought pattern:  "I gained X.  That means I'm going to gain X+infinity."  Except that's not how it works.  That's never how it works.  But it's reminiscent of ED thought patterns.  "They want me to gain X.  I know I'm not going to stop at X.  I'm just going to keep gaining and gaining and it'll be totally out of my control. You'll see.  I can't trust my body.  It has no idea what it's doing. I have to keep it under control."

The concrete difference here is that I have no desire to control in a disordered way.  During my eating disordered years, even when I wasn't engaging in disordered behavior, the trap of wanting to was always ready to spring.   But now it's not so much as lurking underfoot.  I mean, thank goodness, don't get me wrong.  But color me surprised.

Anyway.  For now, I'm just rolling along doing what I'm doing.  I passed the early glucose challenge test (with PCOS you take one around 14-16 weeks, in addition to the normal one later on).  We had a normal anatomy scan a week ago (for some reason my practice does two, the next one at the standard 20-22 weeks).  Everything's clearly going okay so far.  (Except the heartburn.  It can fuck right off.)

So really I'm back, in this new strange way, to a very familiar spot:  Trust your body.  It can do this.  You can do this.  Other people have done this! And they did just fine!  The more things change...

Onward (and Upward on the Scale)

First and foremost, thanks for the well wishes both here and elsewhere, everyone.  They really mean a lot  ^_^


I appear to have hit that early second trimester phase of "What do you mean I just ate breakfast? No, no, I'm sure it's lunchtime. I'm so very sure." I've also reached the stage where I'm meant to gain on average a pound a week from here on out (weird completely not weird how those coincide).

The eating isn't a problem, pleasantly, maybe because I'm still very much in the phase of "don't eat every two hours? get horribly nauseous."  And the scale number right now isn't so much of a problem.  But if I'm at 15 weeks on Friday, thinking about a pound a week from here on out is daunting, I'm not gonna lie.

It's actually quite comforting to be connected with other women* who have come through the other side of infertility** and have the exact same reaction, with no eating disorder history at all.  Yes, this is hard won for all of us, but yes, it's still an uneasy if joyful adjustment -- in the way it probably is for most pregnant people, and that's comforting all over again.

Having said that, this seems like a time when I would be well served to employ some of those CBT coping skills I have cultivated over years and years and thousands of dollars worth of therapy.


* If you google Then Comes Family you'll find us.  It's far from just infertility-centric.  It's the entire spectrum of family and community, in pretty much every flavor you can think of.  

** "for now," my mind always supplies, "you've come through it for now."  Shut up, asshole.

Team Pink

If it seems like I haven't been around much the past couple of months, it's because I painted myself into a bit of a corner by mentioning IVF.

Much as I love my longtime readers (luff you), a good number of you know more or less who I am in real life, so I straddle that weird line of internet pseudo-anonymity, within a certain infinitesimally small circle.

Basically what I am saying is, our IVF cycle was successful, and I didn't want people in real life to know until we hit the second trimester.  Because when you go through infertility, it is next to impossible to just sit back and assume that everything's going to go all right from here, that you get to keep this wonderful change in your world.

We hit the second trimester a week ago.  We're having a girl.  We're unspeakably excited.

We found out it was a girl on Monday, and yes, that's pretty damn early.  This was thanks to a test called Panorama, type of NIPT (noninvasive prenatal test) that is slowly but surely becoming more widely used in prenatal care, although for the most part they're still not covered by insurance if you're under 35.  These tests look for various potential chromosomal issues -- the Trisomies, various micro-deletions, and in Panorama's case, triploidy -- including assessing the sex chromosomes.

We got Panorama not because we were in high risk categories, but because (here comes more of my entitled feeling toward healthcare) we felt we deserved to know.  Because when you go through infertility, it is next to impossible to just sit back and assume that everything's going to go all right from here, that you get to keep this wonderful change in your world.

So we know, not based on an sonographer's say-so, but on DNA, that we're having a little we nymph with two X chromosomes.

Our first anatomy scan is coming up in mid-late May, and hopefully that shows everything continuing apace.   I can't quite let myself settle into that idea.  The closer it gets, the more afraid I am.  Because when you go through infertility, it is next to impossible to just sit back and assume that everything's going to go all right from here, that you get to keep this wonderful change in your world.

In the meantime, I have a lot of thinking to do about this girl.  Knowing my family at large, and especially my in-laws, I've got to do a lot of thinking about how to talk about and healthily live in body and food.  Knowing me, I've got to do a lot of thinking about how to model assertiveness and confidence.  Knowing about the world at large, I've got to do a lot of thinking about... a lot.

But first I gotta go buy some pink stuff*, and hope to hell everything's going to go all right from here, that I get to keep this wonderful change in my world.


*she said, appalled at herself, for truly, she totally had a unisex nursery planned either way, she swears.  It's just... pink!