Food relationships

One of the side effects if you will, of changing to a Paleo lifestyle is that it changed my relationship with food. I mentioned weeks back that I was (successfully) battling my tendency to be an emotional eater. I guess that's to be expected, but did it all change for the better?

I recently read a blog (that I read often) about a women who faces steeper infertility challenges than I do; she is unable to conceive at all and has no children. She is a powerful writer and expresses herself so well, I often feel like she is writing what is in my heart. I found that when I read her thoughts, I feel less alone in the world for a few minutes.

Recently she wrote about "the sugar coating" we women put on things. You know how it goes, people ask us how we are and we say "fine" instead of really telling them how we are. This happened to me just yesterday. Someone asked me how the fertility treatments were going, a woman who has been there done that herself and would be totally sympathetic. What do I do? Tell her how I'm really feeling? Nope. I give a flippant remark, plaster a smile on my face and quickly change the subject.

The blogger commented that this practice comes back to bite us in the derriere and often "big time." Underneath that sugar coating is often not pretty, festering and toxic. I am coming to realize she is not only an amazing writer but also very wise.

I'm down to 177 - the lowest weight I have been in 10 years. People are starting to comment...you've lost weight, you look good, you look pretty today. How do these compliments make me feel? Like crap....total and utter garbage.

Bottling up all my emotions and grief has come back to bite me. I realized, I am punishing myself for losing the babies and not being able to "get over" all this. I realized that the flatter my stomach gets, the more grief and emotion I feel because I should be large and round right now, getting ready to deliver my child in the weeks to come.

Yet I feel I am trapped. I thought if I could push down the grief and bury it, I could control it somehow. I don't feel there is anyone in my life who could understand me... I have three children, this happens all the time and people recover. Why can't I? There is something wrong with me and I just need to move on...

But the more I bottle it, the more it seems to snowball and grow. Saturday I had to go to my SIL's baby shower. It was the epitome of bitter sweet. I remembered how I felt when I found out she was pregnant. What fun! To be pregnant with your sIL, right? I looked forward to sharing belly shots, clothes and advice to this first time mom. I didn't have that and loved the idea of helping someone else. I also looked forward to sharing a bond with someone. AS much as I wanted it, I was never close to my immediate family.

After I lost the baby, that all changed. She became a physical and tangible reminder of what I had lost. Every time I saw her, I would look at my shrinking stomach and compare it to her growing one. And when her child grows, I will see how old my child would have been.

But the thing is, she's not an acquaintance or colleague, she's family, and so I had to find a way to deal. So I bottled things down more deeply and got to work on making baby quilts and blankets and a scrapbook. With every page, every cut, every stitch, I thought of my baby and it tore my heart out. It's the best quality quilt I have ever made, using an entire spool of thread for the quilting alone. But it was painful for me.

I think I thought that maybe I could make up somehow, apologize for the way I've been feeling. It's not that I don't want her to be unhappy or not pregnant....and I truly believe each mom should have some heirloom quality special mementos for their baby, especially their first. So I really did want her to have those things, and they are exactly what I would have made even if I had never been pregnant. But a part of me wonders if somehow I thought making those items would heal a part of me, let me forgive myself for how I was feeling yadda yadda yadda..... talk about sugar coating over the whole mess.

It didn't.

That morning before the shower, I woke with dread and was physically ill. The tears came which I quickly washed away. I realized that throughout the morning, my hands would shake on and off. I would start to feel my heart race and the panic set into my chest. I haven't had to deal with panic attacks in years, but it was amazing how quickly it came upon me. I forgot about the roaring in my head that accompanies these attacks. I pulled it together, and once at the shower, I 'm happy to say I did very well. For my SIL's sake, no, let's be honest, I didn't want my husband to be even madder at me that he already is, so for his sake, I held my control and did the best I could. I often escaped to "check on the kids" which helped a lot. I only cried once. OK twice, but the second one doesn't really count.

So as not to paint myself as a total monster, please understand. I love and care about my SIL, I would never want to hurt her. But my emotions are so full to flood stage level, I am finding I can no longer control them. I keep putting up sandbags, and they keep leaking through and under and over that wall. And my husband is not a monster either, it's just that all this fertility stuff makes him crazy. He doesn't want to talk about it, or hear about it. I love him, but there's this wall up between us in this issue and trying to take it down, just drives a wedge between us, so I have (finally) learned to keep my mouth shut.

Finally, I worked up the courage and was able to talk with C and made the offer that had been stuck in my throat for the last 7 months - to call me any time day or night if she needed help, breast-feeding advice etc. It was the right thing to do, and the one time on that awful day that I was actually, if just for a moment, proud of myself.

But I am not.

I am still here, stuck in this spot hating the way I look. I no longer brag about my weight loss, I no longer care that my clothes are starting to fall off a bit. In some facade of normalcy, I do tell my husband because he is so into this (paleo, nutrition, weight loss etc) But food has no flavor or joy, I eat enough to maintain my health, and drink lots of tea to settle my constantly moving stomach. I am still losing. It's becoming a struggle to remember I am important to my family, and I have value if only for that.

Crazy, isn't it? because I can't have another child? And what happens if we do get that miracle and this all goes away like it did when I had Josh? Just makes me sound even more crazy, doesn't it? Hence me not talking to anyone about it,

I don't have a happy ending to the story. Not yet anyway. I made the mistake of helping pack up the gifts at the end of the shower. Touching those soft clothes and miniature booties and such...big mistake. When I close my eyes to go to sleep at night, I see that perfect white infant gown, can feel it against my skin. I hate when night comes and I must try to sleep. My dreams are also coming back to "bite me" as city girl says.

I don't know what I am going to do yet, other than start to be truly honest in the blog and pour my heart out here. I didn't want this to be a whiny depressing place - I wanted it to be helpful to other ladies like myself. But maybe I need to help myself first so I can be a help to other, if just for a short while. Maybe once I am honest and start to scrape off that sugar coating, and expose the ugly wounds underneath, that will be the flood gate I will need to heal, and let the tide regress.

City girl talks about her lighthouse...when she is at her lowest, she has this lighthouse - adoption. When I first read that, I thought, but I don't have a lighthouse...I probably won't get pregnant successfully. But then it dawned on me - my lighthouse is my family...Rob, the kids...they are my light. They will guide me home.

I dunno, but I am hopeful - how can I not be when I look in my children's faces? They need me - I have a family to take care of and I like all good moms, i will find a way to pull it together.