What I've already sacrificed for this chance of a baby

I had my appendix out when I was fifteen. Once it was out, the doctors discovered that it was perfectly healthy and had no guess as to what had been wrong with me. At the time, and for many years after, I chalked it up to being absolutely miserable having just transfered from a very small Quaker school where I had been since Pre-K to a large public high school where I knew no one. I believed in psychosomatic illness; I actually still do, I've just gotten new data in recent years.

In the time between my appendectomy when I was fifteen and when I was twenty-four, I had been to many doctors about my intestinal discomfort, distress, love affair with the bathroom, whatever was the polite euphimism of the day. I had been told I was severely lactose intolerant and had Irritable Bowel Syndrome. I believed the doctors because I had found no reason not to. I was uncomfortable and unable to keep food in my body for very long, but I didn't know what to do about it. I've been 5' 7" since I was 11 years old and I fought to stay at 105 pounds. Eating didn't help, so I figured it was just my body type.

When I was twenty-four, I got hired by the same non-profit I work for today. And for the first time in the year and a half since I had graduated from college, I had health insurance. I decided to go crazy and try to address ever single health concern I'd ever had at once. By some wonderful chance, I stumbled across the path of the most lovely rheumotologist. I told him everything that was wrong with me and he said that all these random things that I had told him added up to a potential single disease. He ran some blood tests and sure enough, I was the proud owner of an auto-immune disease that had gone undiagnosed for ten years, my pointless appendectomy being the first outbreak of Celiac Disease.

It explained everything; my inability to gain weight, my love affair with the bathroom, my poor dental hygiene, everything. And the only thing I had to do to cure all my problems was never consume gluten again...

For those of you who don't know, gluten is in EVERYTHING. Gluten is Wheat, Rye, Barley and Oats(by way of always being contaminated). So, no bread, no pasta and pretty much no packaged foods because the American food industry has found that wheat is a wonderful, CHEAP, way to bulk out pretty much any prepared food. I was diagnosed in June of 2005 and I haven't had a Krispy Kreme donut since. I had been a pretty bad junk food addict my entire life and I suddenly lost what I considered to be entire food groups.

But it is worth it. My love affair with the bathroom has stopped being a necessity and is now a choice I get to make. I can finally gain weight; 125 pounds and proud of it. And I don't feel run down and tired all the time. Celiac causes severe cases of vitamin and mineral diffeciences. Emily has stepped up in wonderful ways to help me. She cooks all my food and in recent time has started gluten-free baking in a semi-professional way that involves me actually getting to have home-made cookies and cakes, which is amazing.

Through these past two and a half years, one consideration has kept me on the straight and narrow when very little else would. Women with Celiac Disease that is not under control are at significantly higher risk for miscarriage. Once you are diagnosed, ob/gyns say you have to be gluten-free without any cheating for two years before you should even consider trying to conceive. That's how long it takes your body to really begin to heal fully.

So my desire to get pregnant and bring a baby into our family is what kept me from weeping when I sat down at the conference table this morning at an all-staff celebration of one of my co-worker's promotion within the organization and saw the beautiful box of organic, yeast-risen donuts. It kept me from reaching into the box as time and time again the coworker who had brought the donuts in, explained in loving detail just how wonderful these donuts were. To be fair, my coworkers are great. They go out of their way to accomodate my food intolerances. In fact, they had bought me my own container of diced fruit so I wouldn't feel left out at the meeting.

I sat this morning with my container of fruit in front of me, the donut box being handed across me multiple times so everyone could try each kind and smiled, realizing that after two and a half years of abstaining, in just three weeks, we will start trying for that dream that has kept me from cheating, a healthy baby to love.