ED has knocked on my door a few times this week. He was wearing khakis, pretty casual. He seems to want to show up whenever I go to acupuncture which right now is weekly. If you are a friend or family member of mine, you know that my husband and I are trying to conceive. I have been off the pill for sixteen months now. I started seeing a fertility acupuncturist two months ago.
I was pretty set on not having children and then when I met Ben, I started to like the idea better, mainly because Ben was so keen on having kids. I think I would be a good mom. But I do have fears. Some have to do with ED and some have nothing to do with ED. I think if you had asked me seven years ago if I wanted a baby I would have simply said no for the fact that once you have a kid, your body (and life) is never the same.
My acupuncturist asked me last week if I was scared of gaining weight during pregnancy. To be honest, right now I am not, but I have a feeling that as soon as I get pregnant and start to gain weight I may freak out a little. I have never gained weight just because. My eating disorder always controlled my weight loss or weight gain. My “Freshman 15” was from ED, not beer pong. But when you are pregnant you can’t help but gain weight. Who knows?! Maybe I will totally love the lack of control and embrace it.
I also can’t help but think that if I was just in a little bit better shape than I am now, that it would make gaining weight with pregnancy a lot easier on my mental state. I know this is a total ED thought and am working on letting this one go. I am also aware that sometimes being in too good of shape makes it harder to conceive. My acupuncturist has suggested I back off on the amount of barre classes that I teach, which I have done. I am going to guess that having someone tell you to exercise less or in some cases, gain weight, in order to get pregnant, is a hard one for most to hear. But I can guarantee it is way harder to hear if you have experienced ED.
Three months before I got married my sister told me that I needed to be completely over ED before I consider having a child. I was disheartened by her comment because at the time NED and I had made so much progress especially within that last year. All I heard was “You aren’t better. You would f**k up your kid”. It’s only been 19 months since my sister said that comment to me, but I can now see how right she was. Now that there is so much more distance between me and ED, I can admit that getting pregnant 16 months ago would have been such a different experience for me than getting pregnant now or 6 months from now. For that reason, I am ok with how long it is taking. I am hopeful that I will be so over the moon when it does happen that ED will just be a distant memory or maybe by then I will have moved and he won’t be able to find me at all. To be continued…
Yours,
Robin