n o r m a l

Well, once again, my body has failed me…in a different way this time…but still a frustrating struggle. I recently had my thyroid tested for abnormalities. Here is the whole story.

I have never really been a skinny person (well, at least since graduating from college, that is). On our wedding day in 2003, I looked OK – not at all perfect – but OK. Fast forward exactly one year, and on October 18, 2004, while walking on the beach in Ocean Isle, Mike and I decided that we would try for a baby. I had been insistent on waiting at least one year, and now it was “game on”!

We came back from that walk on the beach and I tossed my pack of pills in the trash. I also decided to get into the best physical shape that I could, so that when I got pregnant right away (HA HA), I would bounce back into shape easier. Well, I did it, and I lost nearly 15 pounds in 3 months and I looked good…and was really happy with myself.

Well, then reality set in as each month of pregnancy failure occurred…and enter the fertility treatments. No one could, or can, tell us why we had to resort to such measures….all of my tests always came back “NORMAL”…normal, normal, normal. Now fast forward through 3 years of pills, procedures, surgeries, and countless injections of various hormones (who knows what the heck all of it was at this point…I never asked…if it was going to get me pregnant, I didn’t care what it did to me in the long term), and I am a sickening 20 pounds over what I initially weighed BEFORE losing the weight…and I just now finally get pregnant.

Getting pregnant with twins, I was supposed to gain around 45-50 pounds…I gained about 30….perhaps because I already had a nice cushion for Ella and Aidan to begin with! 6 weeks after their delivery, I had lost all 30 pounds and was right back where I was upon getting pregnant (20 pounds overweight). Not too bad….everyone told me that the weight would just fall off over the next few months.

Wasn’t that a joke!

Here I am 9 months post-partum and I look like a beached whale. I actually gained weight and am 7 pounds heavier than I was at my 6 week check-up.

You can imagine how desperate I was to have my thyroid panel come back with some sort of anomaly. Don’t I deserve something from all that my body has been through in the last 3 years to come back with an answer...a solution of some sort?

Of course not…the test results?

NORMAL

Here we go again…no one can tell my why I have to struggle so hard to lose the weight. Does anyone ever wonder why I am rarely in any of the pictures with the kids? Well, because I am grossed out at the sight of myself. I don’t want to ever remember, or have any hard proof, of ever looking like this. It is unacceptable to me to look like this 9 months after their birth..it makes me look lazy…and I am anything but lazy…I don’t have time to be lazy.

Enough rambling…this was therapeutic for me. Be on the lookout for a skinnier Jen…not sure when…but this last “NORMAL” has me mad…really mad….and even more determined to make my body what it used to be, and to try to find myself again.