I’ve started the new year lower than my highest weight and only half a kilo heavier for the holiday and sudden road trip indulgences, but I have also started this year with another reason to keep getting healthier.

As if I needed one more reason…

Sometimes it is easy to forget why we are doing this. Even when we’re wearing the pants every day that we only used to wear on our ‘fat’ days, we forget the benefits like lower risk for diabetes, heart problems, longevity, etc. I forgot a while back, but these past few weeks have been nothing but a big reminder…

If I were at a normal, healthy weight, I would happily tell you now that I think I’m pregnant. I have sore boobs, intermittent abdominal cramps, random and rampant nausea, heartburn (which I haven’t had since I was about eight years old), sneezing fits, heaps of tiredness, headaches, food aversions and more.

The big thing that was the last straw for me, and a big inspiration for this post, was the fact that I smelled some off food before my husband did. Our freezer got turned off at some point and some of the food spoiled. I smelled it from across the unit with the freezer door shut. And my husband, who was doing laundry right by the freezer and has a sense of smell at least ten times better than mine because I only have one functioning sinus, didn’t smell it.

If I was at a normal weight, I would happily tell you I might be pregnant.

But I’m not at a normal weight, and that’s what breaks my heart. The smell thing, I don’t know. But the sore boobs could be PMS. The cramps due to my cyst. Nausea, heartburn, tiredness, headaches and food aversions? Flu or stomach bug, perhaps, or just a reaction to the rich food of the holiday season. Sneezing fits? Tis the season in Australia.

If I were healthier, I might still have cysts, but I wouldn’t have such a large range of other things wrong with me that could explain what are also known as early pregnancy symptoms. Less would be a mystery and complication, and more would be symptoms of a single cause.

It’s not the right time for us anyway, with a move very possibly coming up soon, me so far from my goal weight, financial awkwardness, so on and so forth. But if I was healthier, I either wouldn’t have half the problems I have right now, or I might be able to tell you some good news in a while…

One of the big reasons I am trying to lose weight is because I want to have as healthy of a pregnancy as I can. While having a baby isn’t in my close financial future, that just means I have more time to work with when it comes to losing weight.

I’ve lost a heap of weight since starting meal replacements in May, and I am very proud for having done that. And yet, I’m not where I thought I would be having lost forty pounds. Like I said, we’re not ready for baby right now, but I at least thought we’d be using condoms because I wouldn’t need to be on The Pill for regularity any more.

I’m tempted to tell the doctor that I want off birth control, but I don’t see what my other options are for at least keeping up the image of things going without it. Sure, it was fine when I got my ultrasound early this year, but that doesn’t mean going a long while without a TOM won’t screw me up next time or cause problems.

I want to be a mother so badly, but I am afraid that whatever is going on with my body is going to prevent that dream from coming true. I know a lot of women with PCOS (I’m not 100% sure I have PCOS, by the way) just have to lose a little weight and then they get pregnant, but therein lies the problem.

Now I have lost weight, and it doesn’t seem to have done much. They say just 5% of body weight lost helps most women to restore regularity, and yet nothing is happening for me off The Pill.

Rock, hard place, rock, hard place.

I don’t want to damage what chances I have of getting pregnant, but am I doing the damage by staying on birth control or going off it?