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The Childless Mother

Dealing with infertility and finding happiness

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SLIMMINGWORLD

The DUFF, weight loss for ivf and PCOS

Loosing weight for me is so desperately frustrating. I have all these reasons I should be doing it. Mainly because we want IVF but everything just seems like it’s gone to pot since my car accident in March.

I have always felt like the DUFF in my circle of friend. I don’t say that for cry’s of “no your not!!” It’s just the facts. I have carried a lot of insecurities over the years for the way I look and I spend a lot of time judging what is wrong with my appearance. I can honestly say I have never felt beautiful, no matter how many times my mum or husband tell me I am. They have to right?

What pisses me off is that I am a strong woman. I have faced some of the worst human experiences and am still standing. I have put a brave face on and worked through loosing my pregnancies and continued to try. I have dealt with the knowledge that I would probably never be a mother even though it’s a dream I have had from being a child.

I carried on the day before Gavin my cousin died after spending a night with him, the same night he was told he was going to die. My hearts never been so broken watching him struggle with that information. I loved him so much and cancer ripped him from us. I continued to breath after he actually died even though it hurt to even do that. My grief screams silently everyday. Mostly no one would know. I continue on.

I have it in me to fight. So why do I find it so hard to fight for myself? For my self esteem. Why do we look for the faults? It’s so easy to do that. I know I need to continue with the weight loss but equally I know that I need to find acceptance no matter my size. Find a way to feel like I look good, to ooze confidence. I am beginning to realise no amount of weight loss will do that for me. I have to do that for myself from the inside.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so they say. So I might not have a skinny arse, tiny waist but does that mean I am less than? Why does that make us feel so bad that we don’t always make that standard of beauty around us.

I have been struggling to keep motivated since the accident. I have since changed my job I’m doing more physical work now which means my appetite is insane so it’s been easy to eat off plan.

Things are finally settling down into a routine after a couple of months setting my company up. It’s going so well, actually smashing my targets but I’m worried I’m taking my eye off the weight loss plan.

I want to do it. I need to do it. I’m getting angry at myself for giving in to bad food choices and justifying them because I’m doing so much physical activity. I run much longer ….. my joggers are still as tight. Argghhhg!!!! 😂😂😂.

I need to get a grip!!

Tomorrow is a new day ….. oh my goodness wish me luck. AGAIN 🙈🙈🙈.

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The Last Stone Blogs : 13 years trying to be a mother.

There is something kind of hopeless, sitting in a doctors office and being told they won’t help you anymore.

Back in 2010, we had a follow up appointment after the last of the Chlomid (a drug that stimulates your ovaries and helps ovulation) hadn’t worked, or should I say it had a little but we sadly lost the pregnancy early on.

I have spoken many times of the desperate ache to be a mother, that feeling of being slightly incomplete. That something is missing. It’s always with you no matter what the outside world may think. So when I was told that my weight would stop any further treatment, I felt like I was at rock bottom looking up at a mountain. They handed me a sheet of GI pointed foods and told me to eat from the bottom end of the scale and then sent me away.

I remember smiling and telling my husband I would do it. I would get the weight off. But in side ….. my heart was breaking.

Unless you have been in my shoes, unless you know the complete desperation of wanting something so bad but feeling like it just would be impossible. You can’t know. Especially when the nurses were telling me,

“You need to loose this weight but it’s going to seem impossible because you have PCOS”

Thanks for that. If I didn’t already feel like I had a mountain to climb that just made it worse. How could I ever do this?

For those reading who aren’t the person needing to loose weight. You need to know. YES it’s a great incentive, YES ITS A great reason but knowing that only makes the pressure so much worse. Especially when you try so hard and the weight doesn’t move.

I already felt like a failure as a woman. I couldn’t do the one thing that should be easy, that some people are trying to prevent. That I have actually been trying to prevent until meeting my now husband. Adding my weight to the problem I just felt so low, so useless. Also the issue of it actually being so difficult with having PCOS I just felt lost.

Then I felt angry, WHY ME? WHY US?? Why is it I have to do all of this when I see beautiful big women pregnant around me. Is it not enough that we have been through what we already have. It’s the first time in my life, I wanted to give up!! I needed a break. I needed to not feel like I was letting everyone down.

A couple of years passed but the ache for children didn’t go. I knew it was time. I started with small changes at first. More water, less processed foods. The weight to my surprise started to go.

I was 20st 13lbs the first time I stepped on the scales in Derby Hospital. Within a couple of years I was three stone down.

We decided to move areas, back to my home town in the North East of England, a fresh start. So my weight loss was put on the back burner. We went on some amazing holidays. I love to travel.

Then came more heartbreak when I lost my cousin in 2016. We had often talked about loosing weight when he was better. So when he was taken from us I felt like I needed to do it for both of us. It took a little while to get there but in 2017 I went back to Slimming World after a beach holiday where I just felt huge.

I was 18st 7.5lbs less than the fertility doc weight but still bad. Even sitting in my first class I had already thought about probably failing. It was half hearted because I didn’t trust myself. But I was wrong. I underrated how strong I could be. In my first week I lost 11lbs!! I simply followed the plan.

I wish I had the magic wand to share with you why it’s worked this time. The truth is I really wanted it, I didn’t look too far ahead and just took it meal by meal to start with. One of the biggest changes this time is that I am kind to myself. If I have a slip, as I still do all the time, I get back on plan from my next meal. I don’t wait. I just get right back up!! Keep going. Keep fighting!!

I’m 61lbs down now, I am into the last stone to hit that IVF weight. That miserable woman sat in that doctors office in 2010 wouldn’t ever believe this. I owe it to her to keep going.

I am going to diary the last stone however long that takes. I hope that it helps others out there no matter where you are on your journey.

Be kind to yourself. Plan and prepare for your weeks ahead I do a meal plan each week which I will share over the blogs coming up. But mainly. NEVER GIVE UP FIGHTING.

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PCOS Girl vs Her Weight Loss Mountain.

About six years into our journey to becoming parents, I knew my weight would be a problem. It might even prevent us from being able to move forward with treatment.

When the Chlomid didn’t work and the other options were drying up. I had to face the fact it was time that I did something.

For years my weight had acted as a comforter, a layer of protection against the hurt I was feeling. With each baby lost, ripped from my body I took comfort in what I always had, food. As I did this layer upon layer went onto my body, like a physical badge of the pain I was feeling.

As I have written before, I was always a chubby kid. I was teased for it when I was young and in truth I did learn to toughen up about it. One day on my way back from college, I was probably 17 and not wearing very flattering jeans when a young boy asked if I would like his seat in my condition. He thought I was pregnant. I was so embarrassed I took the seat and thanked him. How do I tell someone. “No I’m just fat.” 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

I then met my now husband and our happiness turned to contentment and with that came eating, a lot of eating. The weight crept up and up but I didn’t see it. It was only standing in the fertility doctors office on those scales that would dictate what treatment I could have, as I stood there and the nurse told me I weighed iover 20st. I wanted the ground to swallow me whole.

The doctor then told me to get any further treatment. I would need to be below 30 bmi that’s 13st 3lbs for me. It felt like a mountain. When he added that it would prove to be difficult with the severity of my PCOS, I just felt like he told me I would almost certainly fail and that little voice that is often there telling me I can’t do something. Well she all out laughed at the idea of me trying to diet.

I made a good start but as promised it got difficult. Very difficult. I started to convince myself that it just wasn’t meant to be. I would find myself finding comfort in food and on went the cycle. On and on and on.

I wish I could bottle what’s been different this time. I would share it for free with anyone that needs it. I still remember the suffocating desperation, the urge to lose the weight but feeling like I couldn’t do it. My food cravings would always get the better of me. I could never imagine living without certain foods and if I tried I would think none stop of all the things I couldn’t have.

I heard so many times,

“Well if you really want it you will loose the weight”

The fact is if my body worked as others did that’s true but it’s soul destroying to give it your all, to deny yourself things you love to achieve that goal and then to lose nothing or even gain. The eyes in group on you like “she must be cheating!” I wasn’t.

I gave up frustrated. Resigned myself to the fact that I couldn’t get the weight off. That no one wanted to help me.

In May 2017 my husband and I went on another amazing holiday to New York (my favourite place) and then on to Dominican Republic (I also love it there). I felt frumpy and unattractive. I hated being by the pool. I decided when I got back….enough was enough. It was time to change.

I went to see my doctor and let it all out. I cried so much that I was hiccuping by the end of the appointment. She was the first doctor that really listened. I felt she was with me and really wanted to help, she herself had lost weight recently and she understood how hard it was for me. She also offered me Olistat. I knew about the drug and it’s side effects …. google them they aren’t pleasant. But I was desperate. The drug stopped my body absorbing some of the fats in the food.

With prescription in hand and a renewed motivation I stepped into my Slimming World class, it’s not the first or even second time I had joined and even a small bit of me thought;

“Oh here we go again!” 🙄🙄

The first week I lost 11lbs. I was amazed. I followed the plan perfectly. Trusted in it and it provided a truly awesome loss. That motivated me into the second week and on. Between the plan and the tablets I have lost 49.5lbs and 24lbs away from my ivf goal. I had lost all hope of ever getting here, it made me feel so terribly guilty and sad that it was me standing in my own way. Now I feel hope again.

I don’t have a magic wand, the tablets aren’t miracle workers you can still gain but I feel they have me at a even chance like anyone else now. It’s still hard, so hard on days when I still want to comfort eat.

The amazing thing for me is that as time is going on, food is becoming less important. Where before I would be thinking about food most of my day, now I just think about what will take the hunger away quickly and what will help towards my next weeks loss.

Do I still have bad meals/ days. OF CAUSE!! I’m still that chubby girl inside and I still love food. The biggest change for me this time is that I forgive and forget the slips right away, from the next meal. I don’t let it drag on or punish myself by trying to skip meals, that ultimately would lead to more bad choices because I was so hungry.

I’m a little kinder to myself now. It’s ok not to be perfect and I try to not compare myself to other people.

I guess there are a lot of weight loss stories out there much more inspirational than mine, but I wanted to share this. To talk to the person out there crippled by grief, desperate for a family but feeling like they will never loose the weight they need to.

You can do it. Take small steps. Take it one meal at a time. Be kind to yourself. Find support either a group or maybe even some friends that may want to loose some with you.

If you have PCOS and probably find yourself explaining this when the scales don’t reflect the hard work you are putting in. I understand that. It might not show this week but it will show eventually don’t loose hope. Keep fighting.

I hope soon I will be writing a post at target. Ready to start the scary chapter that is IVF. The question mark that has loomed over us for years. Will it work. Part of me thinks I was scared to loose the weight because if it doesn’t work than that is the last of my hope gone. That prospect is heartbreaking.

For now however I will remain focused and keep fighting every day to get there. I feel like we are warriors and I say that a lot. What we go through and then still function, it takes strength. I feel that even more so since battling every day to loose this weight. I imagine every day I kick its arse….. in the hopes one day soon, I will have achieved my dream. It will all be worth it then.

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The Demon Voice Tormenting a Fat Girl

I have gone many years as a chunky monkey, I think the very truth of the matter is that I have always felt like “that girl” the plain frumpy one, the DUFF, I was always the ugly one out of my friends. I hate that word ugly but for the purposes of this blog and honesty that’s how I felt.

I didn’t refer to myself as this because I wanted people to say “No you aren’t you are beautiful” It was the real true of the voice in my head, no one would want me…. I mean, look at me!

I think that feeling started to take root from a young age so that it became part of who I am and my making reference to my weight or appearance first was a defence. I was always the friend, never the girlfriend. Then I met my husband young after a small number of unsuccessful relationships, he saw me in a way I still to this day don’t really understand. I felt like he might have  broken vision or something that he didn’t see what the rest of the world did. Until him my mother was the only one that told me I was beautiful, and she has too say that right?

What makes me feel sad when I think back to those pre Ben years is I felt like being less that a beauty queen meant I was less than, I felt worthless and unloved in general. I have a strong relationship with my mother but I always felt like the least loved in everyone else’s eyes. That lonely little girl, with a front of humour and being tough cookie and it breaks my heart and she has steered so much of my life.

There is a lot of focus on body positive image now, some camps are big is beautiful, some are big is unhealthy and should loose weight. I am of the opinion that people should mind their business, beautiful is more than a dress size or a gym routine. Beauty is most definitely in the eye of the beholder. I wish I had known that growing up.

I have tried so many times to loose the weight, it has of cause been made difficult by the PCOS not impossible but hard. I have had perfect eating weeks with exercise on at least 5 days an still put on weight.

This time we are trying to loose the weight for treatment, not to fit into some clothes or for me to feel beautiful, I am loosing weight to have a baby. The beauty of it all now seems so stupid. I am entirely loved by my husband that’s all that matters to me.

Will I succeed this time? Who knows, I started Slimming World and I have lost 13.5lb in two weeks which is great but I know that can’t continue the bitch that is PCOS will see to that, I am just taking one meal at a time and trying to forgive and forget any slips as quickly as I can.

That little voice in my head that tells me that I can’t do it, that I am no good, that no one will love me its still there sometimes I am not going to lie, but I have found a way to lower the volume.

If I could pass on one bit of advice to just one person out there reading this is –

The outside world will always have opinions, on social media sadly some people seem to get off on writing hurtful things about people they don’t know, not to mention those “health” fanatics that feel its ok to post videos and comments to tell people to not be lazy put less in move more, these people have never been through what you have.

If people spent more time focusing on their own happiness the world would be a better place, this is their problem not yours. Beauty is not on the front of a magazine or walking on two long legs down a catwalk, beauty is in your heart. Don’t let anyone make you feel less than. We are all different, what a boring world it would be if we were not. See you for who you really are, beauty on the insides radiates out no matter what your body and face look like and the world will see you that way.

I hope this time my weight comes off, I hope I can get my body in shape to carry a baby I have been desperately trying for 12 years for. Its funny how this time the size 10 jeans from top shop that seemed so  important seem kinda silly now. Especially as I am loosing weight to grow another beautiful big belly……. funny how things turn out.

 

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