So the Introduction Continues

When my mother died I had been married for two and half years. I was putting off having a baby for many of the same reasons that some women do. I wanted to be settled in a new career and I wanted to wait until my husband and I had been married for a good period of time. My mom told me to have a baby before it was too late because she feared that there was a chance that I wouldn’t be able to have children like two of my older sisters.

Shortly after she passed away I had a great desire to become a mother. I wanted to replace that same relationship that I’d lost. Seven months later I found out I was pregnant and twenty weeks into my pregnancy, when everything happens at the same time, I found out that I was having a little girl and that I was gestational diabetic.

I instantly thought of my mother and how she was gestational diabetic when she was pregnant with me when she was thirty-nine. I was only thirty, so naturally I worried. I did the math. My mother was thirty-nine when she had me and thirteen years later when she was 52 she was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. So if I was thirty and diabetic I could very well be diagnosed with Type 2 by the time I was forty-three.

I was very strict with my diet and I walked on a regular basis. The results were that I was able to control my blood sugar with the diet and exercise and I had a healthy baby girl. I even lost thirty pounds in the process after the baby’s birth and breast feeding. Sadly, the weight came right back.

Four years later I became pregnant again and the same thing happened. Only this time I couldn’t control the sugar with diet or exercise. The endocrinologist put me on insulin injections almost immediately. I was devastated, but the gestational diabetes had come back a lot stronger this time and that’s all that I could do.

I continued to keep a strict diet and to check my sugar daily. But now in addition to all that I had to give myself insulin injections three times a day.

So did I learn? No. After I had my baby boy I lost the same thirty pounds and two years or so later I gained them all back.

The interesting thing about telling this story is that it was not that I didn’t know the simple rules of weight loss. Eat right and exercise. It was that I chose not do them. I knew from past dieting experiences that when I made the right food choices and worked out that I lost weight.

Both of my pregnancies I met with a dietician as soon as I was diagnosed and I learned all about the right way of eating. I actually learned new things with them that I had never learned before in my thirty years.

So when people assume that I gained weight because I didn’t know how to lose weight or when they offer advice it cracks me up. Of course I know how to lose weight. It’s not about not knowing. It’s about not wanting to do it. Very simple. I’m not saying that’s right but it’s true. That’s basically the reason many of us gain weight. We don’t feel like working out. We don’t feel like eating right. I knew that I was in danger of becoming a diabetic like my mother. Yet I still continued to eat the wrong things.

Three years after having my little boy and gaining back all my weight I was listening to npr one day. There was a report about weight loss surgery, like lap band and gastric bypass. The segment discussed a new study by The Journal of the American Medical Association. This study found that people who had some type of weight loss surgery were most likely to control their diabetes or get rid of it.

I thought back to the two times when I had the most weight loss. Each time I lost weight I did so because I was forced to do well. I had a living being inside of me and I was the main person responsible for their health. I had to be good. The thing is, I should have been doing it for myself too and I didn't. I thought about all this and I also realized that both times I had to be put myself into a radical situation in order to lose weight. Maybe I had to do that again.

That’s when I really started thinking about lap band surgery. Next I’ll discuss my two year adventure with the lap band.