Finally…I had a fill a couple of weeks ago. Nearly 4 weeks ago actually. She put in another 1ml giving me about 10ml total. I was surprised as I thought they only took 10ml but she said she has a girl with 14ml in hers. Interesting. Anyway I noticed the effect immediately. Eating is hard work. My portion sizes shrank immediately and I take a long, long time to eat now. I lost 1kg the first week without even trying. Yay! I got a bit excited and hoped that the 1kg a week loss would continue. Why do I always think that it’s going to work without me making an effort? The following week I put on the 1kg I lost and last week I stayed the same. The thing is that if there is a loophole I will find it! If I’m at home and have lots of time then although initially I can’t eat as much I can eventually finish the plate over a matter of hours. For instance I was still serving myself my usual serve of breakfast - not as much as it would’ve once been but more than I should be eating with a lapband in! I’d eat an initial amount - put the plate on the bench and come back over the following hours and finish it bit by bit.  Admittedly before the fill I would’ve eaten that breakfast and probably snacked on extra things but still…why do I cheat myself like that?

So this week I got strict again and have been using my lapband plate to serve my food so I don’t have the opportunity to come back and ‘finish’ leftover food. That’s beenworking well. Will be interesting to see whether that’s made a difference weight wise. I even managed to fit in one Jillian Michaels workout dvd.

However I have a new tactic…I can’t believe I’m about to write this…I got sucked in by the Bodytrim ads on foxtel! Can you believe 2 years and thousands of dollars later I’m buying diet products again? Sigh…anyway I’ve watched 2 of the dvds and read some literature and I’m actually quite impressed. It’s actually not a diet and sounds like a really reasonable way to eat for the rest of my life…It is low carb (not no carb but low) and I’ve never really been sure about this approach before but this guy really makes sense.  He says that if your diet is high in carbs that the carbs are the first thing your body will burn and it will never get to burn the fat stores if there’s lots of carb stores there. Which kind of explains why I keep putting on so much weight. My diet has always been really high in carbs. He also believes that food is 70% of the success of weight loss and just plain old walking is 20% and strenuous exercise is 10%. I like this concept. It explains why the weeks I’ve killed myself exercising 6 or 7 times a week at high intensity that I don’t lose weight! I like the fact that despite the fact he owns one of the most successful personal training companies in Australia he is not advocating strenuous exercise for weight loss. He just wants you to walk 10,000 steps and follow the food plan. Of course walking 10,000 steps is still a challenge for me but I hope to work my way up to it.

It’s funny because I really fight the structure of a ‘diet’ usually. I hate being told what to eat. But clearly just eating what I want isn’t working and I’ve been really feeling the need for some structure. On the bodytrim weight loss plan (there’s also a weight maintenance plan) you basically eat 6 small meals a day of which 3 are protein snacks.  The rest of the meals are primarly protein and veg however for breakfast you can have one serve of  starchy carb or fruit. You also have one protein only day a week and one ‘free’ day a week where you can eat what you want but they recommend you still eat your protein snacks. It seems like a good balance to me.  From what I’ve researched people seem to be having a lot of success with it.

I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea and I used to be quite anti protein diets but for some reason this one appeals. Maybe I’m desperate!

Anyway it kind of fits in with what I’ve been thinking about doing for awhile. Now that Carys is on solids I’ve been wanting to change the way we eat. I’m following the Baby Led Weaning method which means no purees, mushy baby food etc. The principle is she should be able to eat appropriate food off our plates.  And of course anything with added salt or preservatives is not recommended. We eat lots of canned and packet sauces etc. So I can’t feed her what we’re eating! I’ve been steaming veg etc for her separately which is not ideal.  So I’ve been slowly going through all the sauces we have in the cupboard and have been planning to get back to more ‘real’ foods and this is a great opportunity.

So the 1st Jan has come and gone…and the Monday after the 1st Jan has also come and gone and I am no closer to being in control than I was.  I have an appointment next week for another fill. I really hope that helps. I need some serious restriction. SERIOUS.

Thanks for everyone’s advice. I really appreciate it and it’s nice knowing I have friends that care. I seriously need to look at the psychologist option and Nola I hear you on the walking but it is seriously hot here…seriously. If I could get myself up early then it might be easier. But with the broken sleep I’m having with my little one waking up all the time…it’s hard. I know that sounds like an excuse…I’m really hoping once this hot weather settles a bit I can start walking. I can’t really see me doing much else exercise wise at the moment.

I’m beating myself up constantly for eating crap and for not exercising which is not helping matters at all. I’m feeling rather down at the moment and it concerns me. I think I really need to start taking SAM-e again but I’m hesitant to do it while breastfeeding as there has been no research done on whether it is safe to take it while breastfeeding and even though I have a low supply and have to top up with formula, I really, really want to keep breastfeeding for as long as I can.  So I’m in between a rock and a hard place at the moment.  I know if I could start exercising I would feel a lot better about things and if I could get my eating in control.

Every part of my body is aching at the moment pretty much all the time. And if I get up and walk after sitting for awhile I have a serious waddle as my feet, ankles, calves, legs all hurt and it is becoming embarassing. I’ve never really felt I had a fat person’s walk but lately I think I do. Awful.

Will update after my fill to let you know how it goes…

I have been wanting to update here for some time but honestly I just don’t seem to have any time to myself these days…I love being a Mum but boy is it tiring and time consuming! I miss being able to just go and do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it…but of course I wouldn’t change a thing.  Tonight everyone else is in bed and I decided to stay up and put down some things that have been on my mind.

5 weeks after giving birth to Carys I was quite excited as I was only 4kg heavier than I was when I first fell pregnant. This was of course still much higher than  my lowest weight (due to IVF and my last pregnancy) but I was still quite surprised and happy to see most of the weight disappear that quickly. I stopped weighing myself in the end but I estimate I put on between 16-18kg during the pregnancy so was happy to have shifted 12+kg within 5 weeks. However I haven’t really weighed myself much lately and I’m a bit scared to as my eating has been TERRRIBLE and I have done no exercise.

A couple of weeks ago I decided my eating was really out of control. I was hungry all the time and my meal sizes seemed to be getting closer to what I used to eat pre-band. So I spoke to my lactation consultant and also Dr Duncombe about whether they thought I should have an adjustment. I already have a low milk supply so I didn’t want anything to affect my supply even further! Both of them agreed I could have an adjustment so I did that and had 1ml put back in. I’m pretty sure this took me back to my pre-pregnancy fill amount. My first few days I took it easy and felt a difference. However it didn’t take me long to work out that although the fill slowed me down eating wise I could still eat almost as much as I was before the 1ml. I just had to eat it slower and really chew well. So I went back for another 1ml  two weeks later. And again I’ve found the same thing. I have to eat a lot slower and I’m having more food get stuck (but eventually pass through) but I can still eat a hell of a lot more than I should be able to.  It’s scaring me! I mentioned to Dr Duncombe that I was worried I’d stretched my new ‘pouch’ or smaller stomach but she didn’t think I had. I’m tempted to go get another fill to see what it does. I’m almost wanting to get to a point where I can only drink liquids but I know that is just stupid as that will definitely affect my milk supply and I know it’s not healthy. I just need my band to be my self control at the moment and I don’t think it’s ever going to be?

I’ve been feeling really depressed lately despite being so in love with my little girl. I hate the way I look and I still can’t fit back into a lot of my clothes. My stomach is the main problem…I hate the extra bit that’s hanging down and stopping me from wearing my jeans and hence most of my tops which I feel I need the tightness of my jeans to wear with them.  My depression is causing me to want to eat more and eat bad food and it’s just a vicious cycle.

I’m not exercising and I’m hating the way I feel. I ache when I get up in the morning. My knees and ankles crack loudly with almost every move and I’m starting to spend more time on the floor with Carys and getting up from there is  a real effort and it hurts! Don’t even talk to me about bathing her as I’ve just started bathing her in the big bath and it is a real effort to get down and stay on my knees to bath her, let alone getting up.

The thing is I don’t want to be that Mum! I want to be full of energy when I get up in the mornings and get up and down off the ground with her with ease. So why am I doing this to myself? Why am I doing this to her? I love her more than anyone/anything I’ve ever known. I don’t want to be a fat Mum. I don’t want her to get teased because of me. I don’t want her to be ashamed of me. I want her to be proud of me. I don’t want to let my weight stop me from taking her to the beach or wet’n'wild or to go out and run around with her.

I’ve got every excuse under the sun for not exercising. It’s too hot, it’s magpie season so I can’t walk, I don’t have time. And truthfully fitting in anything is hard work. I could definitely fit in a walk with her (i.e do something that includes her rather than trying to use my exercise bike or elliptical where I need her really to be asleep) but the heat and the magpies are an honest deterrent for me. So I’ve been toying with the idea of joining a gym with childcare. I mean I’m not working and I should just make it my job to go to the gym EVERY day. With someone to take care of Carys while I work out I have no excuse really. Except I’m struggling big time with the idea of a stranger looking after her for an hour. BIG TIME. She’s only 3 months old. Will she feel abandoned? What if they are mean to her? What if they don’t pick her up if she cries? It’s all just too much for me. Except of course I know that she’s better off being without me for an hour every day than forever. My mortality is playing on my mind big time. I’ve never seriously considered the fact that something could happen to me because of my weight. But since Carys came along I have nightmares about me having a heartattack or something and leaving her without a Mum and the thought devastates me. I want to be around for my little girl so I need to think about that when worrying about her being in childcare for an hour right?

So tomorrow I’m off to check out a Pure Health Club near me that has childcare and lots of classes. They even have a class you can bring your baby along to which I love the sound of (wish they had that one more than once a week!).  Wish me luck!

Here’s the long, painful story…

I started feeling mild contractions around 1am Wed morning 5/8/2009. By 5am they’d gotten really bad and I was starting to get a bit scared. I noticed they were getting closer together and the pain was starting to scare me.  So at 5.20am I texted my Doula (Liz) who arrived about 35 minutes later.  As she arrived I burst into tears as I realised this was it and I was actually going to be meeting my baby in the very near future.  By the time she got here the contractions were 5 minutes apart and lasting 60 seconds. By 6.15am they were 3 minutes apart. However after a few hours of sitting in the birth pool my husband  and Liz set up for me the contractions slowed to every 10 minutes but they were stronger. They continued throughout the day – anywhere between 8-10 minutes. I got out of the birthing pool at times when I got too hot and spent time on the fit ball, walking, sitting, laying, trying to rest in between contractions.  At 7pm they started to come every 5 minutes. We lit some candles and sat and talked in between contractions. I was in the birth pool at this point.  My husband  sat and played his guitar for awhile. We all commented on how peaceful it was and I truly did feel quite relaxed despite being in quite a lot of pain through the contractions. By 8.25pm my contractions were 3 minutes apart and 60 seconds long. I was shaky, sweating and crying. Liz felt for sure I was getting close to birthing the baby and we left for the hospital. Before we left Liz took me into the nursery to take a look at it and told me that next time I walked into this room it would be with my baby.  A very emotional moment.

The walk to the assessment unit was dreadful.  I had to stop every 3 minutes for a contraction…it’s a long walk when heavily pregnant anyway but that was the longest walk of my life! When I arrived I was shaky, sweating and crying and the midwife could see I was in a lot of pain so sent me straight to the birth suite. As we arrived at the birth suite another midwife there starting asking me all these questions…and guess what? My contractions starting getting further apart.  It was clear she didn’t think I was in ‘true’ labour and she wanted to do an exam on me. I didn’t want the exam but she pretty much insisted so told her that I didn’t want to know how much I was dilated so I didn’t get discouraged. But of course I knew if they sent me out of the birthing suite it would be bad news.  They sent me up to a private room in the ward and offered me a sleeping tablet…I found out later I was only 1cm dilated, 90% effaced, baby’s head well down. Liz was in shock as she knew I had been having really strong and regular contractions. So I took the sleeping tablet and slept in between contractions which were back to 5 minutes apart. Liz lay on the floor next to me and sat up to hold my hand in between every contraction. What an amazing woman. This continued throughout the night.

At 5.15am the next morning (Thursday) I was given another examination and I was still only 1cm. Liz suggested I might want some pethidine (something she would not do usually under any circumstances but she knew how much pain I was in and knew I needed to rest). At 5.30am I had the pethidine. I had beautiful sleep in between contractions but still woke up groaning in pain when each contraction arrived.  At 8.45am I was given another examination. Still 1cm dilated. Saw my obstetrician who told me I was in very early labour and this could continue for days. She suggested she booked me in the next morning to have my waters broken if nothing had progressed by then. I found it hard to believe that I would have to wait that long but agreed for her to book me in. We decided to go home again (I was longing for the birth pool again!) and got home about 1.45pm Thursday. I spent the afternoon trying to rest (no success as contractions were still 5-10cm apart) and in the birth pool. At 6pm I’d had enough and called the hospital as I was exhausted and was not handling the pain. I wanted to see if they could break my waters then rather than the next morning. They told me that all their birth suites were full and they couldn’t take me so I’d have to wait till the morning. They gave me the option to come and spend the night in the private room again with pethidine but I just wanted it to be over and I knew they’d give me an epidural once they’d broken my waters and I started dilating. (At this point I should remind you that I prior to going into labour I DID NOT want an epidural. It scared me more than the labour pain and was adamant I wouldn’t have one…but now I was begging them to give me one!) So you can imagine how distraught I was at them telling me I had to wait till the next morning. I didn’t know how I was going to cope but I had no choice. So it was back in the birth pool.

At 1.40am I could not cope anymore and we rang the hospital to tell them I was coming in even if all I could do was have some pethidine. So we went in and they did another exam on me and I was 2cm dilated. Oh the joy!  I was still in absolute agony. The midwife who checked me was really great and tried to get the obstetrician on duty to agree to give me an epidural or break my waters early but she refused (we saw her leaving to go home as we walked in…she clearly wanted to go home). But after making us wait a couple of hours she finally came in and gave us the good news that I was going to get an epidural immediately. I had heard her on the phone several times talking about me and how much pain I was in and how loud I was when having contractions that they could hear me at the front desk.

So finally around 3am I got an epidural and it was pure heaven. Finally I was out of pain…50 hours later…No complications and not painful for him to put it in. My concern was that because I am a bigger girl he’d have trouble finding the right spot but it was all fine thank goodness! Not without worry. He told me about the all the risks of epidurals and proceeded to tell me my risk was double for all those because of my weight. Awesome. Honestly though I needed to be out of pain so even though the risks worried me I had no choice but to go through with it.

My doctor arrived around 6am and broke my waters and put a Syntocinon drip on to get the labour really going (36mls per hour). By 10.30am I was 4cm dilated…apparently that was the hard bit getting to 4cm. Then around 1pm I started to feel a lot of pressure and a bit of pain again. The doctor wasn’t due for another hour or 2 but I asked for another exam as I really felt like the baby might be coming. Liz said she doubted the baby would be coming as it was a bit early and said we should be pleased if I was 5cm-6cm. I had an exam but the midwife wasn’t too confident and said she thought I was 6cm but wanted to get another opinion. So another midwife came in and said “There’s no cervix”. I asked what that meant and Liz said “You’re fully dilated” Hallelujah! The baby was at -1 station.  So they told me to wait for another hour to let the baby come down a little bit more and they the doctor would come for me to start pushing. At some point I had a top up of my epidural again as I really started to feel the contractions.

At 2.40pm my obstetrician came and the hard work began…the pushing…At this point she was at +1 station. She was born at 4.24pm. I honestly didn’t think I’d get through it. The first hour or so I didn’t make much progress in moving her out, and at that point I would’ve gratefully accepted a c-section to be honest. But about half way I started to make progress and I could hear everyone getting really excited and I could feel the pressure from her head…so it (kind of) got easier to keep pushing despite now having been in labour for 60+ hours with nothing more than 10 minutes sleep at a time.

And then she was here…They took her to the paediatrician’s table first as there had been meconium in my waters when they broke it  but they brought her over to me for me about 90 seconds later to see what sex she was…I said “It’s a little girl…I’m so happy…oh you beautiful little girl” and they put her on my chest and I cried. She looked up at me all slimy and with big wide eyes…she had SO much hair…it was all curly from the vernix and she was so big! She was 9 pounds. But I fell in love with this little slimy, wriggly, chubby little girl instantly. We just gazed at each other forever and I kept kissing her head. When Dale spoke to her she would look around to find where his voice was coming from. Such as special moment and I’d do it all again 40 times over for her…

Born Fri 7/8/2009 at 4.24pm after a 60 hour labour!!

9 pounds 1

53.5cm long

Carys is pronounced like Paris but with a ‘C’. It means ‘love’ in Welsh. Janette was my Mum’s name and Vanessa is my Mother-in-law’s name.

I’m possibly biased, but seriously the most beautiful girl in the world.  I’m totally in love.

She has some ’stork bites’ on her face which I’m told will fade eventually…probably in a few months.
I can’t believe it’s taken this long for me to post this…life with a newborn is crazy!

I am so, so, so thrilled at being pregnant.  I can’t even begin to tell you how much.  However unfortunately I am not one of these women who does pregnancy well.  No siree, not well at all. I just did my first ante-natal class last night and it was a physiotherapy class aimed at helping you make yourself more comfortable during pregnancy. She went through the list of symptoms and asked who was experiencing them:

• Backache - check
• Pelvic Girdle/Pubic Symphysis pain - check
• Indigestion/heartburn - check
• Inability to sleep - check
• Inability to get comfortable in any position - check
• Tiredness - check
• Moodiness/emotional instability - check

Not only was I the only one putting up my hand for all of these… but I was the only one putting my hand up for nearly any of them! What is wrong with these other women? Seriously…I am not having a lot of fun right now.

I think I underestimated how hard it is being pregnant and overweight. It is hard. Even though my stomach is definitely looking more rounded, I doubt most strangers would know I was pregnant by looking at me. Of course those that know say “oh you’re tummy’s popped out” and comment that I look much bigger, but most of the time I think I just look REALLY fat!

I’m now 28 weeks and have gained 12kg. I’m now just above my pre surgery weight which sucks. I’m trying not to worry about it, but it does bother me. My only hope is that I’m so fed up feeling the way I feel right now and being frustrated that I can’t go have a fill and start to fix this weight problem that I’m hoping it will motivate me to really work on getting off the weight after the baby is born. My obstetrician only wanted me to put on 5kg total through the whole pregnancy, so I didn’t do too well at that goal! I’ve just honestly been unable to get moving and start exercising. I’m so tired all the time. I get home and it is all I can do to cook or clean up or pay bills or do grocery shopping, let alone to even spend 15 minutes doing some sort of activity. It’s a poor excuse I know and I really didn’t think I’d get to 28 weeks having only done 1 or 2 sessions of exercise. And my obstetrician keep saying that all I need to do is go for a walk…the problem is walking is actually really difficult for me right now.  It hurts! Between the extra weight, shortness of breath, back and severe pelvis pain which has started again I am really not able to walk far or for long. I’ve still got 6.5 weeks left at work and I’m struggling to finish that. I hobble around the office like an old lady. Standing up and walking after sitting for a period of time is agony!

I’m off food big time at the moment. The problem is I still get really hungry (especially in the mornings) but I can never think of what I feel like eating. The thought of everything turns me off.  I’m not even into sweet things at the moment, though still seem to eat them out of habit/hope they’ll make me feel better. Which of course they don’t.

And then there’s the tiredness…I’m struggling finishing this post…I make it till about midday at work and then I just crumble…I use all my strength not to call a taxi and go home to bed!

I apologise for the whinge of a post. I’m actually still really thrilled to be pregnant, just finding the physical side of it very hard.  And I figure a whinging post is better than none at all…right?

On  a positive note I had my routine blood tests the other day and I don’t have Gestational Diabetes and so far my blood pressure has been consistently low. So kind of good news that the fat pregnant woman doesn’t have all the problems she kept getting told she’d have because she was overweight! So I’m kind of quietly smug about that!

We decided to have a ‘fun’ scan at 24 weeks, as I really love seeing how the baby has grown etc. We got a few good photos. Quite amazing to make out a real little baby face! We have another one booked at 30 weeks as apparently this is when you really get to see the baby features.

It’s been a hard 5 months so far, this pregnancy, but things are just now starting to settle down. Aside from the dreadful nausea up to about 15 weeks, I started suffering from terrible Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction which started off as mild discomfort in the pelvis region, but ended up getting really bad.  I experienced massive pain at night when rolling over, often accompianed by a very large crack in my pelvis as I turned. I also was unable to put on trousers or underwear while standing up as the action of lifting my leg up hurt too much. Even walking short distances exacerbated it. Basically anything that involved moving my legs at all was painful. If you look at the diagram below and see where the Symphysis Pubis is and imagine if it is inflamed, you can see why!

I eventually got in touch with a chiropractor who practices the Webster technique which is supposed to be really good to ensure babies are in the right position for an easier birth. Things started improving massively for me. Though as my pelvic pain began to lessen my back pain seemed to get worse. I even had to take a day off work one day a few weeks ago because I literally couldn’t walk. Each step I took gave me massive nerve pain. Again, working with the chiropractor has helped to work through my back problems. I was doing a pregnancy exercise class once a week through the hospital. The class is run by a physio and I quite enjoyed it, but I was wondering if it was contributing to my back problems. I stopped going a couple of weeks ago and I’ve seen a marked improvement in my back. Might just be conincidence, but it’s enough to keep me away for now.

The only other symptom that gets quite bad is the reflux/heartburn. I get it pretty much after every meal except breakfast. It is awful! In some ways, good because it is so painful it makes me not want to eat. I can’t help but wonder if the band is making it worse, but I know this is a common complaint during pregnancy, so maybe not.

So aside from the heartburn, being constantly tired and feeling huge, I don’t feel too bad physically at the moment.

At 19 weeks and 5 days we went for our morphology scan. Although we were nervous, we were also hoping that if everything looked good during this scan that our risk of downs would be decreased by 4.

The first stage of the scan was done by a girl who was new to the practice, so she had another more senior lady there to watch/assist her. They were both lovely and from the beginning things were looking very positive. Everything was looking very normal and healthy. They had warned me that because of my weight they might not be able to see the baby’s nasal bone or see the heart properly and that I may have to come back at a later date to get those looked at.  During the scans of my last pregnancy, I became aware that my weight meant that ultrasounds were not as clear and I got upset several times when I read on ultrasound reports that the view was affected by my weight. However as soon as they started doing the ultrasound they commented on how clear everything was and they actually did manage to get a good, clear look at the heart and nasal bone, all of which looked good. So I guess baby was in a good position, even though the placenta is anterior which usually means difficult ultrasounds. Weird.

So after they assured me that everything looked perfect, the doctor who did our amnio last time Dr Carmody came in and had a look too. As he started looking, he let out a “hmmmmm” and seemed to want to investigate something. We both thought he was going to give us some bad news! He went on to say “well that looks normal” and then kept looking at different things and eventually said “This isn’t a good baby, this is a GREAT baby”. We were so relieved. He looked in detail at the heart and how the blood was flowing through it, at the different chambers etc and it all looked perfect.  He went on to say that due to the ultrasound being so good, that he could reduce our risk of Downs Syndrome to about 1 in 800. I can’t even begin to tell you how happy and relieved we were that the baby looked so healthy.

This was a huge milestone for us and at this point I started to believe that maybe everything was going to be ok.

So we went back to the sonographer for our 14 week scan about 6 weeks ago now.  We were very nervous as last pregnancy when we visited this office it was for an amnio at 14 weeks and we naively expected everything to be fine, but within minutes of walking into the ultrasound we were receiving very bad news. So it was hard to imagine everything being ok this time.

But this time within minutes the doctor was reassuring us. In fact within a few minutes of starting the ultrasound he said “Oh this baby looks good”.  He went on to check the size of the baby…check all ok, the nasal bone…check- all ok, the size of the neck…check - all ok. He explained to us that the only way to rule out Downs Syndrome or any other problems for sure was to have an amnio, but added that by just looking at this baby, he did not think it had a chromosome problem. As he finished the exam, he walked out of the room saying “I have a good feeling about this baby”. I can’t even explain how relieved we were.  While I’m not sure I will ever completely relax during this pregnancy, it certainly gave me a far greater sense of relaxation than I had before.

Unfortunately we didn’t get any photos from the 14 week scan, but have some great ones to share when I write my 19 week scan post Promise not to make you wait as long!