Kiss Your Miracle

During our first visit to the fertility clinic back in 2005, Dr. K immediately asked if I worked out regularly.

Me: “Well, I like running.”

Dr. K: “Really. How often do you go?”

Me: “I don’t know… four, maybe five times a week? But I should probably call it jogging – not running. I usually just go two or three miles at a nice, easy pace. I don’t time myself or anything.”

Dr. K: “And you are 5’6 and weigh 135 pounds?”

Me: “Yeah.”

Dr. K: “I think you should stop running and let yourself gain fifteen pounds.”

Me: “What? Why? My regular doctor said weight wasn’t a factor in my fertility problems. He said I’m right in the middle of the normal range for my height.”

Dr. K: “According to the charts you are in the normal range. But every woman is different. You’re not ovulating. You may be slightly below the weight necessary for your hormones to function properly.”

Me: “Fifteen pounds?”

Dr. K: “Fertility treatments are very involved. They’re expensive. They’re painful. If it’s at all possible for you to avoid them, you should.”

I glanced sideways at Adam. He smiled and touched my arm.

Dr. K: “It’s a nice problem, really. I wish I had people telling me to gain weight.”

Adam: “Me too.” And they laughed.

I frowned.

A woman’s weight is not a simple thing. I used to eat for comfort. I gained twenty pounds my freshmen year in college. The day I ripped out of my biggest jeans I decided I had to do something. I started jogging – just five minutes at a time in the beginning – and stopped eating so much junk. Soon the weight began to come off. People noticed and complimented me. Suddenly, losing weight became addictive. I started working out twice a day and living on coffee and Nutri-grain bars. I was always cold. But the day I fit into a pair of size two jeans I was so happy I was actually able to block out the hunger and dizziness I felt most of the time.

Thankfully, I joined a missions organization after graduation and came to my senses. A few years of traveling in and out of third world countries was enough to give me a little perspective. I was finally able to let go of my obsession with eating or not eating, and by the time I got married a few years later I felt like I’d found a good balance. I ate when I was hungry and felt generally comfortable with my size. Now the doctor was asking me to purposely grow out of all my clothes.

As we left the clinic that day Adam told me I’d look good with a few extra pounds. “Why do women think men want them to have rock hard bodies? We don’t. A woman’s body should be soft. It shouldn’t feel like a man’s.” Well I do love ice cream, I thought to myself. And if gaining weight was all it took to get pregnant, it would of course be worth it. With Adam’s encouragement I stopped running and over a year’s time, let myself gain fifteen pounds. I did have to buy new jeans, but no one aside from me seemed to notice I’d put on weight.

At first the extra pounds didn’t seem to help with the fertility problems. After a year of gaining weight I’d only ovulated one time and I still wasn’t pregnant. At that point a test revealed I had no working fallopian tubes in addition to my hormone problems, so we decided to go ahead with IVF, our only treatment option. When that didn’t work and we found ourselves waiting, I wondered how to handle things. I considered running again. Losing weight actually sounded like fun, a nice distraction from infertility. I couldn’t control whether or not I got pregnant, but my weight – that was a simple mathematical equation. Eat less, run more, and the pounds would come off. But we were still hoping to get pregnant. What was the point of losing weight first? I decided to leave things as they were.

And then an interesting thing happened. I started to ovulate on my own. Not regularly, but every couple months or so. I still had no functioning fallopian tubes, but at that point Adam and I had started praying for a miracle baby anyway. A year and a half after our failed IVF cycle, I was pregnant. Considering my combination of problems (even the doctors said we couldn’t conceive without medical help), Skylar Grace is a miracle – heaven forbid I should explain away any part of what God did for us. But I do believe my weight was a biological factor in her conception.

Why is it that one woman can be my height and weigh thirty to forty pounds less than I do without it affecting her fertility at all? For me, ovulation apparently requires a Body Mass Index just under 25, the highest number possible before I’m considered overweight according to the National Department of Health. If we want the chance to have another baby, my BMI should probably stay where it is. To be honest, I liked myself better at 135. I miss running in the Florida heat, coming home tired and soaked in sweat. But I also have to admit that gaining weight has been good for me in terms of perspective. Clearly, God likes variety and he intends for people to be different shapes and sizes. Whenever I start to feel irritated by the weight issue I immediately feel a sting of guilt and think to myself, really? You’re bothered by fifteen pounds, with everything else that’s wrong in the world? And then I tell myself something I need to hear at least once a day: don’t take yourself so seriously.