April’s Incredible Shrinking Act – Down 23.4 lbs to Date!

August 1st I was at my all time heaviest weight. 280 lbs. More than 20 lbs over the weight I was when I was 9 months pregnant in 2003. Emotionally I was at an all time low. Physically my body was giving up. I was in chronic pain in my hip, ribs and back, and I felt really sick all the time.

My SIL is a Traditional Chinese Medicine Doctor, and she offered to treat our entire family. We started the full body healing clease on August 11, 2009. The first month I lost 10 lbs just by eliminating sugar, dairy, caffeine, soy, wheat, yeast, vinegar, and citrus.

The second month I started regaining weight at the rate of about 0.4 lbs a week for 3 weeks running. I felt angry and betrayed and wanted to give up. In desperation I consulted my MD about a referral for weight loss surgery (WLS).

After getting my hopes up that the surgery might actually be a possibility, my hopes were dashed when the Vancouver Island Health Authority slashed gastric bastric OR times. I re-consulted with my MD and he decided to try me on a WLS type diet without the surgery. He had me eating around 1000 cals the first week and a half, and then I had to up it to 1350 cals cause it just wasn’t enough food. I lost 13 lbs in a month!

I am continuing with this weight loss program in addition to the healing cleanse my SIL, Dr. D has me on, and I am loving the results I’m seeing! Scroll down to see my progress pics. I will be updating them regularly…

Goal Weight: 146 lbs

Weight Log

Aug 1: 280
Sept 1: 272.5 (-7.5)
Oct 6: 270 (-2.5)
Nov 2: 262 (-8.0)
Dec 7: 254.6 (-7.4)
Dec 28: 256.8 (+2.2) + pregnancy test Jan 12th
Jan 4: 253.5 (-3.3)
Feb 1: 255.3 lbs (+1.8)
Mar 1: 258.8 lbs (+3.5)
Mar 8: 256.6 (-2.2) miscarried March 4th

The Storm… (sensitive content regarding miscarrying)

Last night after I posted about miscarrying, things went from bad to much worse. I started hemorraghing around midnight and ended up needed emergency transfer to Nanaimo. No small feat when you live on a small gulf island where the ferries don’t run through the night. An ambulance came and hooked me up to an IV and started monitoring me while we waited for my parents to come and sleep at the house with our son so my husband could come with me.

I wasn’t dizzy or anything, but my legs were really unstable and I left a murderous looking trail of blood behind me as I was moved from the ambulance to the emergency medical boat to another ambulance and then into the hospital emergency room around 3 AM. They monitored me closely, subjecting me to all manner of unmentionable horrific torture-style procedures until the on-call gynecologist finally arrived at 9:30 AM. Within moments they had me in O/R and I was under anesthetic to have an emergency d&c done to stop the hemorrhaging.

B had gone home a couple hours earlier cause my parents had an appointment in Vancouver they couldn’t miss, and he had just gotten our son off to school and was crawling into bed for the first time that night when I called to let him that the hospital wouldn’t release me unless I had someone to pick me up after surgery. My incredible super-husband who hadn’t slept in well over 30 hours picked our son up from school and was there to meet me when I was released from recovery. He truly is my safe place in this storm.

We had to break the final news to our son, and I did a sloppy inadequate job of comforting him, but we just tried our best to validate the pain we are all feeling as a family. B & I went to bed when we got home around 1:30 PM, while our ds watched movies and kept quiet until B got up a couple hours later. I slept straight through for about 6 hours, just in time to wake up and tuck my son into bed, with deep gratitude for the gift God gave us in him.

There will always be a hole in our heart for “nemo”, and we are planning a little memorial for our family of three to honor and remember “nemo”. We thought it would be fitting to send some of nemo’s tissue back into the ocean, in the same place where our family started, where B proposed to me, and where we had our wedding. Life is a full circle of laughter, joy, death and pain.

Peace in the Storm…

Last night I started bleeding heavily and have had intense cramping for the last 24 hours. Tonight I passed a couple masses, and we said goodbye to our 11 week plus 1 day old baby that had stopped growing in my womb sometime around 5 weeks ago.

There’s no way to prepare yourself for something like this. For the past week I have agonized over every little spot, every little cramp, hoping it would miraculously stop, but knowing in my heart that something was terribly wrong. There have been tears, laughter, friends, prayers, and tonight, deep sadness tinged with guilty relief that the wondering is finally over.

How do you explain to your 6.5 year old child that the sibling they have been praying for is going to heaven before we even get a chance to meet him or her? Before we went for the ultrasound yesterday I pulled my dear sweet boy onto my lap and told him that I was having signs that something wasn’t right with the baby, and there was a good chance they would be going to heaven sooner than we hoped. Wordlessly he wrapped his arms tightly around my neck and sobbed his disappointment into my shoulder. I have no words to express how my heart shattered for him in that moment.

We had names picked out. If “nemo”, as we sweetly dubbed my tummy, was a boy his name would have been Maxwell Brian. We all love the name Max, and Brian is my dad’s name. I adore my dad and would have been honored to have the chance to name my son after him. If the baby was a girl, her name would have been Eliza Mae, named after Brent’s gran, Eliza May, but with a change of spelling to match mine and my gran’s middle name, Mae. Both our grans died before we were ready, so it seemed fitting to have our love for them grow on in our daughter.

I saw our baby on the ultrasound screen. So tiny and perfect in every way. Thank you for waiting till I was able to see you with my own eyes.

Tonight I laid on the couch with my feet on my husband’s lap, sipping red raspberry leaf peppermint tea he brewed for me, and talking to my midwife on the phone about our loss. I felt safe to cry with her because she understands the cycle of life and death like nobody else I know, and she feels like the closest thing to talking to my own mom, who passed away over 10 years ago now. We’re linked together by a unique thread. My mom labor assisted her daughter’s birth more than 30 years ago. We have both lost dear ones to cancer. She was there for me when my son was born. It makes sense that she is the first one I wanted to call to tell about our loss. I love you, sweet friend. Thank you for listening and understanding.

After both Brent and I talked to my midwife, we were commenting on the deep peace that has settled over our home and our hearts tonight. The sweet presence of God, here to witness the soul of our child being released into His care, comforting us, and confirming that all is well. Rest in peace, sweet baby. You will never be forgotten.

Please feel free to leave comments below, but we ask that you refrain from calling our home for the time being. Thank you for understanding our need for privacy…

Inconclusive and confusing ultrasound results

When I found out I was pregnant with my son I went in to have my first ultrasound thinking I was between 11 and 12 weeks, and came out being told I was only 7 weeks along. I hadn’t written anything down and wasn’t tracking, so I just took their new EDD with little comment or thought… I have polycystic ovaries so my “normal” is very wonky. I had only had three cycles the entire year I got pregnant with ds, so I wasn’t surprised that the dates were off… a month is a lot, but still… I can go 6 months without a cycle, so quite honestly, menses dates mean nothing to me… and I had no idea or inkling I was pregnant, so was sort of walking around in a daze anyways. I went into labor on his due date and he was a healthy full term 8 lb 8 oz baby two days after the revised due date they gave me at my first ultrasound.

Yesterday I went for my first ultrasound, thinking I was 11 weeks, because I’ve been having spotting and cramping for more than a week now and we were all concerned that I was possibly miscarrying.

The tech looked and looked and looked. She asked for the date of my last period. December 12th. Then she asked the date of the FIRST day of your last period. Yes, like I said, December 12th. How sure was I of my dates? Positive. I wrote it down.

I started getting nervous and asked if she could see a heart beat. Her answer was strange. Well… no… but you’re only measuring 6 weeks and 1 day, so that is normal. Huh?! My immediate thought was that the baby stopped growing and was no longer viable…

Then she swung the screen around and showed me that it likely IS viable. There was the yolk sac, the little perfect embryo, the amniotic water… The tech pointed out that the line around the uterus was clear and black, which doesn’t indicate any re-absorption, but rather growth. She also explained the spotting – implantation of the placenta.

I went out to the waiting room and told my husband and son I’d explain in the car. Prior to my appointment we had agreed that if the baby was gone, I would not invite them in, but if there was a heart beat they would come in to see. And here I was, still in limbo, with neither scenario!

Despite having polycystic ovaries, the month I got pregnant this time was the third month in a row I had a normal cycle after almost completing our healing cleanse.

When I got home I pulled up my fertility chart to see if I could make sense of it all. I started charting Dec 12th, the first day of my last period… I had signs of ovulation, and we had sex on Dec 26, Dec 29 and Jan 11th. We haven’t had sex since – we both had a horrible virus for a month, then I wasn’t feeling well, then I started spotting, so we know for SURE those are the only three possible conception dates…

I got my first positive pregnancy test result on January 12th, and referring to the cart, that would place my date of conception on December 29th, for a Sept 21st EDD. The pregnancy test was a strip. I got a positive… very very faint… couple hours later used another one and it was darker… went to the doctor’s office, and they confirmed it was positive too…

Yesterday I’m told that I have a totally normal looking viable 6 week old plus 1 day EMBRYO, putting my new due date at October 25th. I am SO confused I can’t even begin to tell you where my head is right now. That’s not possible. EVEN if I got pregnant on Jan 11th, it’s not even remotely possible I would have been able to have a positive pregnancy test on the 12th. And that still places my EDD at October 4th, NOT the 25th, so there’s still a 3 week discrepancy.

I also don’t know how to explain the whoosh whoosh of the placenta was that we heard on the doppler… or the fetal movement the doctor was sure he picked up… or the flutters I’ve been feeling… Indigestion?

I’m having my progesterone levels checked, and will hopefully have those results later this week.

Something showed up on my blood work that I am wondering about now too… apparently I have borderline hypothyroidism, which can cause slow fetal growth…

At the end of the day I’m still pregnant, albeit less pregnant than I thought. I don’t know what to think. So until I know otherwise, I’m thankful to be pregnant, and am praying for a healthy baby.