If you are like me, you are an exceptional woman in a very exceptional situation, and congratulations!
Upon my web search on Pregnancy after Weight Loss Surgery, I noticed there are....well... a few good articles out there...but nothing much in support or blogs. Well, here I am! And to begin I will tell you my story, and how I came to be here.
I was just out of high school when I met my husband. I was slim, I was trim, I was young. After dating a year or so I went away to finish my college degree and live the "college experience". When you are on your own you tend to test your limits and break all the rules. 2 cream cheese with bagels for lunch? Sure! An entire package of spaghetti for dinner? Why not? Pizza Rolls for breakfast, oh yea! I gained the Sophmore-Junior-Senior 40, and didn't go back. Months after graduation we married and have been married for 10 years this coming January. For each of the first 8 years I have been either pregnant or nursing. Neither of those situations called for "calorie counting", I needed ample nutrition for my babies, right?
Then came time to start to try to take it off in between weaning and pregnancies...Weight Watchers, The Light Weigh, Atkins, Slim Fast and 3 pretzles...you name it, I tried it, and to no avail. In addition, each pregnancy brought more troublesome health problems, by baby #4 I was on 2 types of insulin, 2 times a day and in for check-ups weekly. My cholesterol reached an average 373 and at age 30 I was diagnosed with the early onset of heart disease. I was told that I would have a heart attack before 40.
I
prayed, and a miracle answered my prayers. I was invited to be part of an experimental surgical research project and have a Metabolic Prevention Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass. Genetic factors from both my parents contributed to my fight against diabetes, cholesterol, and the heart disease so although I felt I was working as hard as I could at being healthy, (cooking lean, stroller walks, pilates classes) the scale crept up, and I huffed about trying to keep up with my children. Nature was not on my side with this.
The thought about the surgery, the changes to come were scary, but the thought of leaving my husband a widower and my children motherless was even more scary. It was nearly a 7 month process of nutrition classes, psychology tests, blood work, more classes, approvals, waiting waiting and more waiting, and then my surgery date came. It was January 23, 2008, and it is a date I will never forget.
Post op was hard, retraining myself to eat in a whole new way was hard, the daily psychological battles are still hard, even losing friends has been hard. Not everyone supports someone who has weight loss surgery, but as long as your family, your spouse, your children support you living a longer healthier life, that is all the support you need.
Well, it took nearly a year and I am past weight loss goal weight. Its been over 2 years since my youngest was born, and I frankly didn't know if we would even be able to conceive again. My husband's heart grew in openness for growing our family, and with prayers from friends we conceived the first month we tried. Wow!
My due date is August 25 or 26 of 2009, so you can see I am still VERY early in pregnancy, but the concern about nutrition and being a WLS patient has already set in. My goal, with this blog, is to collect as many resources of information about this unique situation as I can and to share it with you. I look forward to comments, questions, requests... and I am thrilled to share this journey.
God Bless,
Mrs. Murphy
