Malaise

I’m pretty depressed right now.  I feel like shit—but not morning sickness.  Just like general yuckiness.  I can’t work out.  I can’t drink.  No sex.  I’m tired.  I have this overwhelming feeling of doom.  I hate the drugs and the uncertainty and the worry.  BLAH.

Okay, stay with me here, I’m going to lay out my feelings / grievances in a bit of a winding fashion….

After my anencephaly pregnancy, I was close to 150 lbs.  As my long-time readers may recall, I was ABSOLUTELY famished for the first 17 weeks of that pregnancy and gained around 15lbs—much more weight than I gained during that time period of my pregnancy with my son.  (I’ve wondered since then if my hunger / nausea was particularly strong because of the anencephaly.  I’ve never read anything suggesting as much, but I still wonder.)  And when I got pregnant that time, I was still carrying a little weight (about 5 lbs) from after my pregnancy with my son.  AND when I got pregnant with my son, I was about 5lbs heavier than my ideal weight (because I’d cut back on exercise—eggs hate sweat, or so I’ve been told).

Anyway, I raise all of this because after my anencephaly pregnancy I was 25lbs heavier than my ideal weight.  I certainly was not morbidly obese, but I was definitely at a weight that I did not need to stay at.  Unfortunately, the weight was almost IMPOSSIBLE to lose.  But, because I’m never going to use my eggs again, I was not particularly worried about sweat.  And after working out just about every day very hard for 8 months (I would always take 2 weeks off during my failed frozen embryo transfers) I lost ALL of the weight.  I was downright skinny—back to my college weight!!  Awesome, right?  

Yes, but I think that’s contributing to my current misery.  I got so used to the endorphins from a good workout that just sitting around is making me FREAKING MISERABLE.  M-I-S-E-R-A-B-L-E.  And sitting around being miserable, I just see the weight coming on again.  I know I shouldn’t worry about this, but I hate thinking I’m going to gain a ton of weight only to have this not work out.

My husband is encouraging me to ease back in to working out, for my mental health.  He points out that this week they could not find any evidence of the hematoma and that the doctor (not my regular) said I could do light exercise if I wanted to.  But I’m nervous.  I was bleeding just last weekend.  I don’t feel ready to work out yet.  If, at my follow-up appointment next week (at 8 weeks) there’s no heart beat or a super tiny yolk sac or the hematoma is back, I’ll never forgive myself if I start up with exercise (or sex) too early.  I know that seems sort of silly, but I’ve been through a lot.  I’m allowed to be a little crazy.

Speaking of crazy, I told my husband today I don’t even want a second kid.  That seems impossible to believe, considering all the shit I’ve chosen to put myself through over the past 2+ years, but I really meant it.  I mean, yes, if it had been easy I would have LOVED to have a second kid.  (My heart breaks a little bit whenever I walk into the nursery we set up for the anencephaly pregnancy.)  But I just really hate that the last two years of my life have been dominated with so much stress and sadness and uncertainty.  If I could go back in time, I would have had my son and then donated all of my pregnancy clothes to Goodwill and never looked back.

But, as my husband tells me all the time, hindsight is 20/20.  And at this point we have this pregnancy, which could theoretically be successful (although the feeling of malaise is strong), and I have one last transfer in me.  (As I told my husband, no embryo left behind.)

So I’m just going to try to suck it up as much as I can.  And maybe go for a short swim tomorrow.