I have been avoiding the mirror a lot lately.  I look at my face in the mirror, but not my body.  I can’t even look down, when I shave my legs I avoid looking at the area between my legs and boobs.  It’s the part of my body that feels disgusting to me (apart from feet – feet are pretty disgusting to me too).  I don’t necessarily mean that I am disgusted with the way my physical body looks, but I have some strange issues with my stomach in particular.  Both in the physical and emotional sense.  I am slim build, lucky to have a fast metabolism, I don’t have any eating disorders, I love food and we have a good relationship (except for the sugar, sugar and I are always going at it head to head!!).  So this doesn’t have anything to do with me thinking I am fat.

I have Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and this means that I suffer from random stomach pains and I get terrible bouts of diarrhea.  Certain food and stress triggers my IBS.  My relationship with my stomach has never really been a good one.

The worst issue I have are things touching my stomach – whether that is me, my clothes, the cats or even Chris.  There are times in the day where I cannot bear for things to touch my stomach – even my stomach touching the stomach (i.e. when bending over).  I hate the way it feels.  I have tried to explain it to Chris many times and even to myself, but I just can’t put words to how it makes me feel.  Disgusted is probably not really the right word, but it’s pretty close to how I feel.  But then there will be occasions when I am absolutely OK with my stomach being touched – I am unpredictable, there is no way of knowing if it is OK or not.  It is worse after I have just eaten, but I can often mitigate this by having a hot water bottle on my stomach, this helps for some reason.

The weirdness of not touching my stomach also extends to not looking at my stomach.  I don’t know why, but may be I have so much hate for the pain and grief it has caused me over the years.

Add in the bloatedness from the stimulation drugs from this IVF cycle and the problem perpetuates.  I hate squeezing my tummy ready for the needles, I hate touching it and I hate looking at it.

What will I be like when I am pregnant?  Well from the short period of time I have been pregnant I think this weirdness will still prevail, will it get worse?  I hope not!  For Chris’s sake at least because I know he will be wanting to feel close to the little one growing inside of me!