In the time I have spent – no, make that wasted – fighting the battle of the bulge I have done many sums. They go something like this; it is half way through the year, there are 26 weeks left in the year. If I lost one kilogram a week for 26 weeks by the end of the year I’d be 26 kilograms lighter. These sums seem to always fit in with the calendar year. They get a full work out early in the year, towards my birthday and as the year slowly grinds its way to an end. They work in half kilogram increments, from a measly half a kilogram up to a greedily unsustainable 3 kilogram a week loss. The goal of my sums is to avoid another year, another birthday, another festive season or another summer as an overweight person. Of course, anyone who has ever tried to lose weight knows it isn’t that simple. It just doesn’t happen so neatly. Weight doesn’t come off our over burdened bodies in equal amounts. Packages of times – a year, or six months is never enough time to do all we need to reclaim our bodies. If it was there wouldn’t be a diet pill industry, a weight loss program empire or meal replacement brands available at every chemist.
So what if I could ease up on my all or nothing approach to life? What if I could stop from thinking if only I had eaten that much less for a year, or exercised that much more for a year? If I had lost just 250grams for 52 weeks I would now be XXX kilograms lighter than I am now. Could I head towards another birthday, another New Year without recriminations and guilt?
What if I did more than just make elaborate plans and sums? What if I actually worked at it consistently for a good length of time? Why not make it a life plan and not just a temporary fat reducing thing?
With IVF entering the picture, do I have a hope of living guilt free about my weight or my infertility? This attempting to make a baby business has been going on for over a year. Sure, my weight has decreased marginally in that time, which is surely better than it increasing over time, but if I had just eased up and improved my eating I could have been how much lighter than I now find myself.
I started my life with Wobbles as a person who felt they had no reason to go on. I was on a path to very slow self destruction fed by an absence of love, loneliness and unemployment. Then Wobbles scooped me into his life, goodness help him, and suddenly I had new purpose. I started exercising. I started dieting. It started working. My body started doing what I wanted it to. Then the excuses came. A fall down the front steps at Camp Wobbles saw a slow recovery of the old back problems. As the IVF treatments grew closer and closer my anxiety increased ten fold. My weight increased with each medicated section of all four cycles.
I’d eat to feel comfort. I’d eat to feel in control. I’d eat to answer cravings. I’d eat because I wanted to. I’d eat to prove that my body belongs to me and not to IVF.
Now I feel the unending guilt. I had years to address this and no sustained motivation to do so. Now, for over a year I have had the most compelling motivation and the most wonderful support. The main difference is that I feel this time for an endless cycle of diet attempts has run out of time. At almost 44, I do not have the time to take a year out of fertility treatments to work my body into some acceptable shape.
The more we attempt IVF, the harder I feel that the failure of this is all my own doing on several fronts; my age; my weight; my low ovarian reserve. These factors all unavoidably inter-connected.
The fertility specialists never mention weight to me. On to our third doctor and none has weighed me. Yet, I know that the clinic offers ‘lifestyle’ programmes and generally supports patients having a healthy BMI. My guess that my age sees me as such a difficult case, that the weight issue is a given. Kind of like if I was seeing a plastic surgeon about having a full facelift. Would he actually bother detailing how badly my big nose affected my appearance?
When I am feeling battle weary from IVF treatment I wonder as to the benefit of having some time off between cycles. Others swear by it. Many highlight the virtues of seeking alternative health therapies during an extended time of leave to clean up and revitalise the body. I have read the books, I know there are women out there who have decided to forego medical treatments for infertility and seek all natural methods (including diet) to improve their baby making chances. I just don’t have the confidence to believe I could be one of those people who would be driven by such steely determination. Even if I could afford the time out, I know my lack of confidence and my lack of sustained motivation would prove this to be a wasted time away from treatment. I would be certain to come back to treatment fatter, less fit and worse; even older.
Given the opportunity to indulge my time completely to IVF I have achieved nothing. My gorgeous partner Wobbles has given me the best possible circumstances and I have failed to take advantage of them. I feel as undeserving of IVF success as an athlete who fails to report to training is of winning that important sporting event. I have had the opportunity. I have had the support. I have had the motivation. I have had the chance.
I have blown it big time.
Dear Lifeslurper,
I don’t know if you are ready for this comment right now. If not, please ignore it for now. If you are, then read ahead.
No one is hopeless unless they have given up. I know that sounds oxymoronic but what I just wanted to emphasize is my belief that the choice is in YOUR HANDS. You are always making a choice – whether that is to make a choice or NOT to make choice, to hope or not hope, to give up or keep plugging away. So, how then are you CHOOSING to live your life?
You said it so yourself that you had no purpose before BUT now have new purpose. So you did make a choice, see?
May I suggest though that there is still a higher purpose that remains steadfast for as long as you are alive in this world – even if your newfound purpose does not succeed. For me, this higher purpose gives me a reason for my hope.
Sure you blew it – if that’s how you want to put it. All of us are passing through this life only once and we did not have a dress rehearsal – so we are apt to make mistakes. Every day is showtime. So we try to do our best or at least, intend to do our best.
I believe though that while there is life, there is hope. While we are alive, we can hope for a better tomorrow.
Chin up! As one of the books you’re showing above, “I am more than my infertility”.
Have a great weekend!
Hi Arpee:
I appreciate you taking the time to comment.
Early on in my IVF treatments I secretly held thoughts of it working on the first go. “How would that seem to the IVF veterans with which I have daily contact” I wondered. Despite being given low chances of success I truly believed IVF would be my almost certain route to having a baby. Over one year and four cycles on I am less positive. Of the IVF patients I have close contact with I cannot think of one who feels resolutely positive after experiencing the rigours of multiple cycles. I certainly am more than my fertility, that is why this blog does not only include fertility-related entries. However, I started it as an outlet for my life experiences and at this time IVF is dominating my life and thoughts. I endeavor to record the good and the bad, as I want this to be an honest and open recording of all that Wobbles and I are experiencing with this.
I truly hope you can stay constantly positive once your cycle begins and that you do not need to return for successive IVF treatments. I also trust that you chose to have a BFP. Choice is good. I like to have choices and will choose to believe that you were not suggesting that I have chosen to be infertile.
Thank you again!
Hi Lifeslurper,
I think that all of us that end up on this IVF journey can’t help but torture ourselves with the what ifs. Would I have conceived if I had started earlier? Would I have conceived if I was healthier? Would I have conceived if I had done more acupuncture? Trust me, going down this path will drive you insane. I know from personal experience! I know it doesn’t help but you can’t control what is already done, all you can change is how you deal with tomorrow and the day after that. Try and be kind to yourself. I think you have done an amazing job at not only dealing with your own TTC journey, but also to help other people to cope with their journey.
T2
Hi Lifeslurper,
Of course, I was not suggesting that you have chosen to be infertile. That’s the most infuriating suggestion one could ever get. Some women can choose to get pregnant, some women choose not to get pregnant and the rest of us cannot choose to get pregnant even if we want to.
My apologies if that made your hair stand, but that is definitely not my intent. I apologize if I was preaching to the choir.
I intended it as a nudge, an encouragement. I was referring to choosing our attitudes and responses, not on being able to get pregnant or not.
I do hope I remain positive as well but I expect to go through the roller-coaster as well. No one is immune to it, I think. That’s why I pray for myself and for you all my sisters in this infertility journey (specially us in the 40+ age) for physical, emotional and spiritual strength that we do not stay too long on the down cycle.
Cheers!
Hey Lifeslurper,
Some days I feel hopeless too and today is one of those unfortunately. I am glad that you are here and it gives me comfort that there are people who understand the horror of the journey that can be IVF.
Feeling hopeless doesn’t mean that I am hopeless though and even though today I am the IVF beaten down version of myself, I know that tomorrow or the next day I will be back on the road to the more sunny optimistic person that I can be.
I found a good quote today:
Failure is giving up. Everything else is progress.
Anyone for number 5?!?!?!?
Arpee: Yes, a nudge is always a good thing! Thank you!
T2: It seems an endless spiral, even in the most ideal of situations there can always be fault to be found…and if we start looking real closely….
Jodie: Crikey! Cycle 5 you say??? I suppose it is a matter of making the rest of the ‘stuff’ that comes with IVF into some progress. Some days I don’t see any progress, and then it seems harder. I hope tomorrow is a better day!