@sahabds So coming at this a slightly different angle as someone who’s been through a very serious ED and rehab stint and has been in recovery for 6 years. My body does not respond the same anymore to periods of heavy exercise/food restriction. My body “remembers” the period of stress it went through with my ED and over corrects in a sense to avoid going through that again. For me this looks like extreme fatigue, over fixation on food, irregular cycles etc. So even though other people can do x, y, and z and it’s ok, I found for myself a lot of the time it’s not.
I did end up having to do IVF as I had multiple issues. Whether this was because of the ED or not I’ll never know and my fertility doc couldn’t say for sure either. And again this is after 6 years of true stability where I have not struggled with any behaviors. But fertility is complicated and everyone is SO different. Being 22, you are very young still so age is on your side on this sense.
I will mention: my fertility doc refused to start treatment with me for IVF until I started counseling because of my history. Fertility stuff is stressful and she wanted me to have a solid net to catch me. Very smart woman. I would encourage you to look into a therapist even if you end up not having any issues with fertility because you say you still have your moments. For me, the changes that my body has been going through with pregnancy suckkkkkk, even with 6 years of recovery under my belt. I don’t think anyone enjoys the body changes with pregnancy but for people like us it’s like 10x amplified.
Another thing, albeit very shitty, is you’ll likely see your increasing pregnancy weight at your OB appointments. They have “ANOREXIA” written in bold letters on all my charts and paper work and they still fuck it up and I see my weight anyway. I’ve had to root myself solidly in my recovery that I have zero reaction to this. I had to get myself to a point where it’s just truly “a number” with no emotional attachment. That is a very difficult place to get to, but I do feel it is my responsibility to have controlled emotional responses to this as it’s just the reality of health care in the US.