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Explanation, 2003-05-28, 7:11 a.m.


I think I have to clear some things up. No, I'm not pregnant. Not yet. I will be in the fall, I hope, but I'm not yet pregnant.

Why all the talk of chicken and babies then? Well, we've made a decision to try to conceive when my masters is finished - in the late summer moving into the fall. And I've got a lot against me in terms of becoming pregnant and having a healthy baby, at least according to the research.

For one, I have Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome or PCOS for short. Some call it PCOD, substituting a disorder for a syndrome. It's a disorder that causes my hormones to be all messed up and my ovaries to be cysty (yes, cysty is a word! Just don't look it up!). I don't really ovulate. Here are stats about it from 'Women's Trouble: Natural and Medical Solutions' by Ruth Trickey and Kaz Cooke (funny funny funny book):


  • About 60 per cent of women with PCOD have excess body hair
  • About half will not have periods
  • About 40 per cent are overweight
  • Nearly a third have abnormal bleeding patterns
  • About 20 percent develop 'male' characteristics such as a deeper voice and changes in body shape
  • About 15 percent have the basal body temperature changes with indicate ovulation
  • About 10 percent have regular period cycles

I don't have all of them. No male characteristics here and my body hair is fairly under control. I did have a lot of pimples, which isn't mentioned there, but is how the doctor first started her process of diagnosing. I take the pill to have periods and have for years. With this, as the book puts it, it's hard to fertilize an egg if you don't create them. Which I don't really do. PCOS has been linked to insulin, so I've been taking Metformin, an insulin drug, to help me ovulate naturally - if the insulin is taken care of then there'll be less chance of diabetes in the next ten years and less pressure on the body to ovulate, so it might just do it anyway. Or something like that! I have to stay at the weight I'm at or, preferably, lose more, which, given my history, is a dangerous thing to tell me! So I have this working against me.

So how does chicken come into all of this? Well, I don't eat meat. It's a semi-religious, semi-political, semi-health decision. It's been so long that it's just now part of me - as natural as breathing. However, because of this choice, my iron is down and my B12 is very down. I take 2400mg of B12 a day - two of the strongest B12 pills you can get. If I don't take that much, I'm tired all the time. Very tired all the time to the point that I'm going to sleep right after supper, sleeping all night, getting up and going to work tired then repeating the following night. I have, in the opinion to my nurse practitioner uncle, a form of anemia that isn't always tested for because it's hidden. This is fine if it's just me, but a baby needs to be nourished by a body with enough B12. If not, they could be developmentally delayed. If I'm that low in B12, then I have to start now to ensure that my body is up to nourishing another person. And supplements are not really cutting it - I want to be as natural as possible (until labour, then give me drugs. I think. Periods hurt, childbirth must be killer) and so that means getting my B12 from the source.

Plus, it can't be healthy, taking all kinds of stuff every morning. I take the aformentioned B12, Folic Acid, Claritin, a multi-vitamin, metformin and chromium GTF and symbicort (an inhaler) and the pill. At least I can cut back on the B12. And I'm cutting back on the inhaler. Soon I'll stop taking the pill. And when I'm pregnant, the metformin and the Chromium go. Which is good.

So that's the story. A little to much information for some, but sometimes I need to write it out to remember why I'm doing this. It's not for me, but to get me ready to become pregnant. I want a healthy baby and accept that there are factors that cause a baby not to be healthy. I don't want to be one of those factors.

Oh and any relatives reading - nope, not pregnant. Nothing to talk about here!

Edited to add: Yes, I could eat soy to get nutrients. But, with the PCOS, the estrogen in Soy isn't good for me. So the soy I've been eating for years I can't continue eating because it has been shown to be bad for females with PCOS. At least according to the list I'm on that discusses lifestyle with PCOS and the links they've provided. So no more soy hot dogs or fake steak or anything like that I guess.


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