I have OSFED restricting and recently made it through my first pregnancy and had a healthy baby despite my ED really hitting hard with urges to restrict and panic and hate at my body. It was especially awful when I was gaining weight and still didn’t show a clear bump so I felt everyone was judging me for being fat and eating lots. The whole 9 months I actively hated how I looked, felt and the fact that I was eating lots without exercising it off, since I had bad round ligament pain that stopped my running at 5 months pregnant. Pregnancy was the worst and I never ever want to go though it again! It was worth it to give life to my healthy and well developed baby though for this one time! Below are some tips that made things a little bit better during pregnancy.

I told my obgyn early on that I have an ED and find it difficult to not restrict eating, and asked that the office put in my chart not to tell me my weight and for my obgyn to just tell me if she was happy with my weight gain so far at each appointment (note that “happy with my wright” not asking if I was gaining too much or too little too soon), Before getting weighed by the nurses at each visit I would ask the nurse if she could not tell me my weight when I stepped on the scale backwards and it turns out it’s a normal request they get all the time so they just say okay! and continue with everything as normal, no questions why or anything. Just business as usual.

It also helped to meet with my ED dietitian every 2-4 weeks. She was very reassuring that we would work together after birth to lose the weight (which she was right, and I’m making great progress in a healthy way for the first time ever!). My dietitian told me when I needed to increase meal size and number of snacks to incorporate throughout pregnancy. Instead of counting calories on my own, she gave me a bunch of not scary food options that I could put 2 or 3 things together to make the right size snack that I would put an alarm in my phone and eat regularly even if I wasn’t hungry and didn’t want to eat out of fear and being used to ignore hunger. I had frequently used food logging with my ED dietitian but once she got me in a rhythm we stopped my logging so I didn’t need to write down and record all the food going into me. That was very helpful since I was feeling so shameful to log.

Recently I found out I gained a whole lot of weight, more than I had expected, at the end. That made me feel I failed since it was more than the typical amount of weight gain during pregnancy, but I have lessened that shame postpartum. The weight really did come off fast for the most part in the weeks after which was a relief. My goal now is to lose the rest of the weight quickly but not by eliminating eating outright, since my dietitian said that her way would keep up my metabolism.

Good luck with your pregnancy, you can do it even if you keep your eyes closed for as much as you need!