Page 8 of The Logic of Loyalty

Side effects may include

Irregular to no ovulation

Facial and body hair

Mood swings

Difficulty Losing Weight

Difficulty with fertility

My timer goes off, and I pick up the stick. Not ready … One line.

I watch as the test continues to absorb the pee. It creeps all the way to the end. One line. Dammit. Releasing my disappointment, I lock my phone and avoid the testimonies. I’d rather not read about excited mothers who beat the odds.

I didn’t even realize I had issues with this whole mess until well after I had Jacob. Trevor and I were struggling for over a year with conceiving baby number two. We went in to the family doctor, only to be met with this diagnosis I’d never heard of and one way to battle it.

“There’s a chance that you won’t be able to conceive naturally again,” the doctor told me, barely an ounce of sympathy in his voice.

“If you lose some weight, you could erase these issues completely. It’s likely your BMI is contributing to your irregular ovulation. You say you were slender when you were pregnant with your first?”

“Yes, but I was … not in a very secure environment.”

I was unhappy. I was scared. I was hungry.

“Well, if you want to have a baby, I suggest you figure out how to make it back to where you were with your first.”

“But I was eighteen?” He’s being willfully ignorant if he thinks that makes biological sense.

“Well, that’s all I can say to help you in your situation. You are obese. Your BMI is high. Get out and move some more, eat less.” Without anything further, he got up and left.

For more than two years, I was on all kinds of diets, trying to get my size fourteen to the four I was in high school. It was my birthday, a couple of years ago, when my husband finally put his foot down.

Our boy had saved up for weeks to buy me a special cupcake. I went to get the scale and weigh out a portion when Trevor stood up and pulled me into the other room.

“Paige, you know I love and support you, but I can not watch this anymore. You are starving yourself, and you still aren’t ovulating normally. Please, baby, please start eating again. There’s another way. I know there is. We will figure it out together.”

“Trevor, I’m so close. I can feel it.”

“Baby, I can barely feel you anymore. Please, I know this is so important to you, but look what you’re doing to this cupcake on your birthday.” He grabs my hands and squeezes them tightly.

“I love you. I love you exactly as you are now, exactly as you were at every point before now.” He leans forward. “Paige, please, we’ll find another way. I hate that it feels like I’m losing pieces of you.” Our foreheads press together as he slides his hands up my arms, to my shoulders, and around and down my back.

Where he squeezes my ass.

“Trevor!” I squeal at him, and he laughs.

“Still got that ass, though,” he says with another squeeze and a wink.

Honestly, it was exactly what I needed to hear. I was miserable. I felt like it was a valid sacrifice to make, and that I was being selfish by considering stopping.

We switched doctors and found someone a lot more friendly, with more specialized knowledge about my situation. “Oh, honey, there are so many women out there with PMOS who are obese and getting pregnant.” She puts finger quotes around obese, and I decide to ask her about it. She makes me feel brave.

“BMI is an outdated, racist, and sexist mode of figuring out someone’s health.” She scans my face and laughs. “Sorry. It annoys me. It was a calculation that came from studies on white men years and years ago. It is not a one-size-fits-all calculation.”

Her explanation rocked me. I’d always been a little round for my height, and BMI was an uncomfortable conversation my previous doctor regularly brought up.

Now, years after we first started trying, I truly expected a different outcome. After all of the prescriptions and marking days off the calendar, I felt sure.