The Childless Mother

I started to share my fertility story and it warmed my heart to receive so many messages of support and people going through the same thing. While I am moving through my grief and looking to the future The one thing that I have never really fully concurred is my weight. I don’t think I will ever be able to let go of the dream of having a family until I have at least tried this.

I feel my story is one so many could tell, in a way my weight has been my protector against all the pain I associate with getting pregnant. Especially after loosing our babies.

Well this week I am back at it and after my first weigh in showed I had lost 11lbs on the programme in one week! I am so excited to see what I can achieve. I am no fool – I know slow and steady wins the race. There will be hard weeks and there will be good weeks. I will share them all with you!

I also believe having success stories out there to give you motivation and see others with the same condition succeed is so important. I am luck that I have a friend Tracey Yale who is one such success story, she is a beautiful person inside and out! She has worked so hard to get to where she is now and so has motivated me to follow her, with her help.

I am going to share a few stories like this over the coming weeks so please if you have a story to share with my readers then get in touch!

Here’s Tracey’s Story:

I was diagnosed with PCOS when I was 25 but pretty much knew for a few years prior that I had it as my younger sister had been diagnosed quite young and I had all the same symptoms. When I first got told about the potential fertility issues it shook me slightly but having just started dating my now husband it wasn’t relevant until the years ticked by and ‘that’ conversation came up. We decided we would deal with whatever came our way and if it wasn’t to be we’d just go on lots of holidays. We got married in October 2013 at my absolute heaviest wearing a size 24 wedding dress and not caring in the slightest.

I was marrying my best friend and was so so happy. I came off the pill almost immediately and the old niggle returned along with the lack of a period. I knew quite quickly that any initiation into fertility treatment would be met with ‘you need to lose weight’.

On 10th February 2014 I walked into my local Slimming World group with zero hope and no real motivation, the consultant was talking about how they went for a meal in summer and one near Christmas, I told myself there was no point listening to the details as I wouldn’t be attending by summer let alone Christmas. I’d tried and failed so many times to lose weight so why would it work this time?

Despite my head telling me I couldn’t do it, my heart told me different and I forced myself (yes actually forced myself, whinging for a full 2 weeks how I just wanted a take away or chippy tea) and after those initial 2 weeks noticed that I was actually doing pretty well, week on week I set myself a small, achievable target for the following Monday and made it my mission.

Before I knew it I was actually enjoying it, trying new food, being more active and losing weight. In May 2014 my periods returned, I was so overjoyed I told a restaurant full of people on my return back from the ladies room, by September 2014 I’d lost just over 6 stone and was feeling great.

The month came to a close and I’d been feeling tired, lethargic and my nipples felt like I’d got friction burn, so to try and stamp out the excitement that was rising I took a test to rule it out, I couldn’t allow myself to dream that far incase it came to nothing.

My test was positive!!

On 1st October 6st 4lb lighter I was pregnant. Suffice to say I wouldn’t believe it until a scan had proved it. The weeks ticked by and scan after scan kept confirming that my baby was growing well and healthy.

On 21st May 2015 my amazing dream baby boy Joey was born all 8lb of him. During my pregnancy I’d indulged in cake and ice lollies and put near enough all of my weight back on but now I had a new purpose so I returned back to Slimming World 2 weeks later and today have a very beautiful 2 year old and am 10 and a half stone lighter. I never dared to believe this would be possible or that I could achieve any of the above but it can happen.