Working Out While Infertile

Hello Lovelies!

How are you fabulous chickies today?! I hope you are well. I am suffering from some strange form of renewed optimism. I am feeling pretty good right now, maybe it’s because I decided that I WOULD NOT do that last round Clomid, maybe it is the prospect of not having to try or even think about conceiving for the foreseeable future (well, actually only the next two months, but I choose to ignore the future past then right now). At any rate I am so super pumped today about life and will celebrate by watching Juno, laughing and eating ice cream. The yummy, expensive, gelato kind. I can do this because I haven’t yet had to allocate finances to IVF or diapers and I am feeling flush. So in this spirit of renewed optimism I wanted to post about exercise today. Because, if we’re being honest, I have been a shitty tender to my body these last few years. I have totally fallen off the work out and eat healthy band wagon (reference said gelato above). The eating thing is actually interesting enough to warrant its own blog post. Let’s focus on working out here. I have been meaning to write on this for a while actually because…

I have not been working out.

AT ALL!! Nope, none, nadda.

First off, cool your jets. I can hear you over there hyperventilating: “But Kaeleigh a healthy body gets pregnant so much easier, Kaeleigh extra weight can lower your odds, Kaeleigh working out increases serotonin and you’ll feel better on months when it doesn’t happen… Kaeleigh…Kaeleigh…Kaeleigh!!” ARG! Shut your non-pie-eating pie holes!! Of course I know all that! I do. And I believe it. Promise! I’m not over here, like, “No way!!! A beat up, badly performing body is definitely my best bet at getting pregnant.” I’m not delusional! And yet I have STILL not been working out. So what gives?

When we started to struggle, after we had been trying for a long time, I started to worry that my work out regime may be negatively impacting my fertility. See, I work out a lot. I work out often and HARD.Or at least I used to. Hard like Crossfit hard. Hard like people puking while doing the workout hard (I have never puked, but friends of mine have while working out beside me). And so, it seemed to me, that I should probably scale things back! Seeming as I wasn’t a super fertile beast I thought maybe my body would function better without so much gym activity. So I stopped going. I should clarify that I did not discuss this with my doctor and I knew that there was no medical basis for stopping my workouts to conceive. People in Africa work hard, long days subsistence farming get knocked up all the time. But I was freaking out.

What if this was the key to finally becoming pregnant?

What if scaling back the number and intensity of my workouts would help?

It seemed like an easy choice, actually. Then, because I love to work out hard, and with other people, I had a hard time just going to the regular gym and doing less intense workouts. I did go a little bit. For a few months. But then I stopped going all together. Now, a year and a half after leaving Crossfit and two rounds of infertility meds later, I am up about 15 pounds. On my five foot nothing frame that is a lot. Like a whole, freaking, lot.

And let’s not joke, it’s all fat.

But this means more than just extra weight and not knowing how to clothe myself as well as before. Because infertility is a bitch. It’s a bitch and it stole my sense of self and made me feel broken and strange. You see, a huge part of who I am is how physically fit I am. A large part of my self-esteem rested on this factor. I was always sporty and skinny and full of sharp contours and rippley sinew. As a kid, teenager and adult I knew my body, and it looked like that. But not now. Now I am rounded in ways I don’t understand and have dimply cellulite and a wobbly tummy that I can ACTUALLY FEEL JIGGLE when I laugh!

It’s very strange and helps to alienate me further from my old self. This is just another thing that draws a thick black line under the “new” me. The infertile chick, who cannot seem to become a mother, who is a stranger to herself and cries when she used to laugh. The transformation is complete. Both inside and out, I am a changed woman from when we started this journey two years ago. And maybe this is why I feel so buoyant today.

For the next two months I don’t have to be trapped in this woman’s life anymore. I have at least two months before we begin our next treatment, and against all odds and reason, it feels like a gift.

So, you know what I did today?

I went and registered at the Crossfit gym by my house!

It is a different gym from before, and I have walked into it many times in the past and thought about joining. But I always tucked my tail and left in fear. With my arms cradled against my body. Protecting it from the horror that might happen if I didn’t get pregnant because of something I was or wasn’t doing.

Now I know better. My eggs are old. My body weight is not an issue, I do not have hormone sensitivities and I am ovulating. My weight is as much of an issue as my husbands sperm! Zero. So while I wait to begin my next treatment I have resolved to remember who I am. I am going to start again at Crossfit. Maybe lose some of this annoying weight. Make new friends and put myself out there! I am so DONE insulating myself inside my home and inside my fatter body and hiding from reality. I am here. I am still me. I WILL reclaim my life! While wearing some brand spanking new women’s gym wear that’ll make me feel a whole lot better and make me get back into it just like my old self was.

Because, damn it, I am Unpregnant Chicken!!

Hear me roar! XOXO