A plan

A few weeks after my initial psychologist assessment I received a letter in the mail from the doctor letting me know that she had referred me on for therapy sessions and that I would be contacted soon regarding them. A week after that I received an appointment card saying I had an appointment on the 25th with the fertility counsellor.
The timing worked out really well with the appointment being on the 25th as I had been scheduled for Jury Duty this week which also happened to coincide with the weekend we wanted to go away down south to climb Bluff Knoll. I sent in my stat dec declaring I couldn't attend Jury Duty and thankfully an appointment with any kind of psychologist etc seems to be enough for them to run screaming from you. Who really wants a basket case sitting in judgement on others?
This of course means that we can definitely head down south this weekend.

I am so looking forward to it! For those of who not familiar with the area, Bluff Knoll is is in the very south west of the state near Cranbrook. Christian and I will be driving down with our friends Daniel and Helen and staying in some Rammed Earth Cabins about 90kms out of Albany. I'll make sure I get heaps of photos while I'm there, especially the view from the top!

Anyway, back on topic. So, I had my second appointment today. When I arrived I was told that there had been a bit of a mishap and I'd actually been booked in with the wrong lady. The lady I saw today is just a Fertility Counsellor and doesn't deal with general anxiety issues. She was great though and since I had gone all the way to see her she discussed some of the fertility related issues with me. This mainly centred around my weight loss issues since fertility treatment itself holds no problems for me (although I'll re-assess that when we get to the pointy needle part...)

Essentially I'm at a point now where our treatment will not proceed until I lose weight. Until that point I'm thrown in with the druggies and smokers who will flat out not be treated until they have come clean. My doctor lady said that they aren't trying to make all mothers-to-be super models but of course the drugs they give you to help are less effective the bigger you are and larger doses can be dangerous. And so we got down to the nitty gritty of 'If you want a baby so much, why haven't you lost weight?'.

Fair enough question but at the time I couldn't really come up with an answer. In the end we figured out that I'm scared of having a baby because I worry that I won't be a good enough mother and I also tend to lose sight of the end I should have in sight. When you concentrate so hard on what the scales are saying you do sometimes forget that you're doing it for a baby.

We've come up with a few strategies to get me through to my proper therapy session. One of them is to have something visual I can see every day. At the moment I track most of what I eat online but it's easy to forget to log in and record everything or not log in at all. By this stage however I'm pretty good at figuring out what foods I should eat and in what quantities. It's not rocket science after all. But she feels I still need something visual and so I'm going to make a chart up that counts down the kilos and each time I lose one I can cross it off. It's easy enough to say 'My first goal is 75kgs' but it then makes me concentrate on a single figure and that can sometimes be unachievable. This way I can concentrate on the each kilo and not get bogged down trying to attain something that's still out of reach.

We also agreed that my 'danger zone' is the several hours between the time I finish work and the time Christian gets home. I binge more often when I'm alone and so the doctor suggested that I stock up on sugar free gum and chew as much of that as I can. This way I won't want to put anything else in this gob of mine because I'll already be chewing. Over time I'll reduce how much I chew so I don't get hooked on this as well!
The problem with this is that ever since I had braces I just can't physically eat gum. It feels all yucky and squishy and rubbery *shudders*
I am trying however to not think about this (I'm chewing some now) and I'm hoping that this will help me in times when I habitually snack, such as being online or reading.

There's a couple of other things I'm going to try out but I hope that these will help me start to eat more healthy and to fall pregnant. I think the hardest thing is going to be not getting so caught up in the weight-loss part that I lose sight of the fact that I'm doing this so we can start a family. We shall see I guess.