Eating Disorder Talk

This concludes my story to present day. If you want to know how it got to this point, read parts one, two, three, and four.

Last week, I talked about my foray into antidepressants, a breakup, a new romance, journeying back into bulimic habits and the (then temporary) breakup of the new romance. This week, I’ll tell you what happened when I failed the pregnancy test.

Summer 2004 to 2005 was an odd year in that I didn’t cycle through recovery and back to my old habits. I just maintained them and with it a moderately (un)healthy weight, around 100 pounds. Then came October and reassessment of my psychological situation.

Finally being diagnosed as having cyclothymia, a milder form of bipolar disorder, helped quite a bit as we had a new method of attack towards my never-ending hypomanic and depressive episodes - mood stabilizers. I was put onto a heavy cocktail of lithium, an antipsychotic, antidepressant and sedative. It worked wonders, except for these weird side effects of dizziness and nausea. Then came the diagnosis for that: I was going to have a baby.

I didn’t touch upon it previously, but this would be my eighth or ninth time being pregnant - lack of regular periods coupled with crazy fertility tendencies and lack of estrogen to maintain them meant I’d gone through a miscarriage every time. I had actually been told that I could never maintain a pregnancy long enough to birth a live child. But this time would be different because I would cast all unhealthiness away and I would will it to happen. So it did.

I spent the first three months in a constant state of nausea. Morning sickness coupled with medication withdrawal to mean that I literally couldn’t keep down much more than the occasional mandarin orange and cup of 2% chocolate milk. While on anti-nausea medication. I was also put on bedrest, both due to my high risk of miscarriage and extremely low blood pressure, which complicated my arrhythmia.

Within a month, I lost six pounds and began to feel like a failure at motherhood - and it hadn’t even begun, really, yet! Once the morning sickness dissipated, I was referred to a nutritionist (which was a waste of time - the woman suggested high mercury fish, for crying out loud!), a psychotherapist who specialized in pregnancy and postpartum depression and a cardiologist. Working with me, we created a holistic, healthy approach to this pregnancy - it was no longer my body, it was being rented, and I was to treat it like so. So I did.

I threw caution to the wind and chucked my vegetarian habits. I ate according to cravings, when hungry and to the point of satisfaction. I visited McDonalds daily and went through containers of yogurt and boxes of cereal a week. I drank whole milk. In total, at delivery, I was up 32 pounds from my prepregnancy weight of 105. In total, over the exactly 280 days of pregnancy, I put on 37 pounds - not the near 50 that was recommended, but far healthier than I thought I could be.

I remained active only in my daily walks around the neighbourhood, once I stopped working. This was by no stretch overexercising, though it was quite a bit more than the recommended half hour a day. Probably closer to two hours, daily, but to be honest, I was bored, at home.

I gave birth to a six pound, 6.6 ounced baby girl on her due date. After a month plus of false labour and a week of very early, nonprogressive labour. It was about 26 hours of active labour, in all. I tackled breastfeeding this tiny baby, who was soon undersized (she loses weight as fast as her mother does) and by the time that they let us go home after she’d gained enough weight to not be too concerning, I had already lost 13 pounds.

Within the following three months, due to colic stress, breastfeeding and three walks a day with a snugglie, I dropped to a fairly healthy 110 pounds. I have a small frame without much natural muscle density, so though I looked thin, I didn’t look unhealthy.

By this past spring, I was considering dropping a few pounds that I felt were affordable. Life took a turn for the worst when my relationship crumbled from constant bickering to harsh, cruel fighting on a daily basis. Recently, we decided that we couldn’t make our relationship work as it was, and have been living separately.

Once he moved out, the hangover I was suffering, the nausea…well, it didn’t go away. I honestly went on an unintentional three day fast. The thought of eating, the concept, was repulsive both physically and mentally.

The past few days, I’ve been trying. Even if it meant adding to my caloric intake with high-calorie beverages, I’ve been trying. I know it’s too important for my daughter to see her mom as a healthy, happy individual, not someone who’s mentally sick and incapable of eating with her.

I’ve dropped some odd fifteen pounds since that initial thought over losing a few extra. It’s going to be an uphill climb, but I am at least mentally at the point where I don’t want to progress any further downwards. Maintenance will be my goal for the short term, because it’s the best that I can do.

I hope that my story has helped you in some way. If you’d like to tell me more please leave me a comment or email me, using the contact link on the right. Thank you for reading all about me.