gpandersen
My name is Pam, I’m 36 yrs. Old. I’m married to a wonderful loving husband. We have 6 children from ages 7 to 18 (2 girls and 4 boys) and we are in the process of adopting 11 year old twins. I’m owner/ Director of a child care center and we care for 33 children and working on expanding. Needless to say, we stay very busy!
My weight issues started when I was about 16 when I weighed approx 140 lb. at only 5’ 1”. During my first pregnancy I gained about 40 pounds and only got down to 175 pounds. With each baby I gained more and more weight and struggled to lose. I was now up to 232 pounds. When I was pregnant with my 4th child I was really sick during that pregnancy. My morning sickness lasted all day, every day for 9 months. I was lucky if I could keep a half of a sandwich down at any given time. I had only gained 17 pounds during this pregnancy but for my 5’ 1” frame that was way too much. Being that my son was almost 10 pounds I figured I’d drop at least 20 pounds after having him. I was bummed when I got home and stepped on the scale and seemed to have lost nothing (or very little). Apparently during my pregnancy I must have been losing weight but gained a lot of water weight. Was I truly surprised when I went back for my 6 week check up and the scale said I had lost 50 pounds!! Over the next year I was taking the Metabolife with ephedra and I lost another 50 pounds putting me at 150. I had never felt better. Yes, I was still over weight but the feeling of losing 100 pounds and being able to fit into normal size clothing was wonderful. After having my 5th child, my weight started to creep up on me again. I had tried everything… Slimfast, Nutrasystem, Atkins diet, Low calorie diet, deal a meal, fastin supervised by my doctor and many others. It seemed like the more I tried, the more I gained. When I hit 230 pounds I had been referred to a surgeon for weight loss surgery. My surgery of choice was the lapband but the doctor I was sent to said his surgery of choice was the gastric bypass. At the time, my insurance wouldn’t even cover the lapband anyway. I thought about it for a while and decided that at the time, being that I had very small children, this wasn’t the right choice for me. I waited about 6 years (now being at my all time high of 269 pounds) and decided to check out my insurance handbook again. To my surprise they started covering the lapband surgery in January 2008. I have a whole life ahead of me, children to raise and I want to be around to see my grandchildren. This is the right decision and the right time to make the changes that will affect the rest of my life.
