Weighty thinking

It's so easy for the written word to be misunderstood. I'd like to state that the purpose of my last post was not to whine about my weight. Yes, I am obsessing over it, but I'm obsessing over it because I'm dieting. I'm trying to get to a certain target weight by a certain date. It's on my mind because I count points every day. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing - having a clear goal in mind helps keep me focussed. And I'm obsessing over it because I noticed that a rapid increase in my weight appeared to have given me problems in my last two IVFs. I thought I'd post about my observations because, well, that's what I do. I was mildly interested in the potential link between dulce de leche ice cream and harder ultrasound scans. Between pizza and gas in the bowel. Between Chinese food and mobile ovaries that can't be reached for egg retrieval. If that motivates someone else to try to drop 10lbs, well, that's not a bad thing either.

I know I'm not very overweight. I know I am not infertile because of my weight. I do not blame myself for being infertile - yes, I have gone through a stage of that, but it was because of other things from my life that I have not discussed on this blog. Trust me, there are plenty of other things that I could lay blame on, and weight is not one of them. But I don't, because I don't blame myself - if anything, the blame is due to me waiting too long to find the right man, because I didn't know that I should have TTC'ed in my early thirties. But I'm not psychic so how was I to know when aging would affect things? Hells bells, as far as the weight goes, I was a normal weight when I started TTC. If my problems were caused by weight, well, I wouldn't have any problems because I would have got knocked up in the first six months when I was still a normal weight.

So there we are. It is what it is. I don't know why we can't say that a bit of excess weight could be bad without implying that weight causes IF and that we brought it on ourselves. Weight is only an issue in IF when it causes PCOS and insulin resistance. If you don't have either of those, your weight is not the root cause of your IF. Having said that, the studies still hold that IVF success rates drop with increasing BMI. IVF cancellation rates rise with increasing BMI. It's a good thing to do WW and try to drop a few pounds. Doesn't have to be a drastic amount, but a few pounds less is a good thing. Stop with the digital all or nothing thinking, already.

In less ranty news, I got my information packet from Big New Clinic, and have to race around next week trying to get bloodwork and cervical cultures done. And a pap, I think. Despite the coculture scheduler telling me I only need to get everything done by my IVF cycle, the paperwork clearly says it needs to be done by the biopsy date, which is what I originally thought. And as HIV results take a few weeks to come back, I'm now cutting it fine on having everything ready.