A few months ago I wrote a post about my health and weight loss journey that was really popular. What I didn’t mention at the time was that there was a really compelling reason that I decided to embark on the transformation in the first place.
You see Mr O and I have been trying to spawn a little O for almost three years. Eventually earlier this year we decided to seek medical help to find out if there was a reason that we hadn’t managed to get it right. It’s quite a long and complicated process but one of the very first things the consultant I saw said to me was, “you need to lose weight.” Being overweight is not something that will stop you from getting pregnant (in case anyone is planning on claiming that I suggested this as a form of birth control) but it doesn’t help.
I had already stopped drinking and indulging in the occasional social cigarette but I decided that halfway wasn’t good enough. When it comes to fertility there are so many things you can’t control so taking control of the things you can is really empowering and motivating. I had five months before my next appointment so I put all of my focus into bringing down my weight in a healthy and sustainable way.
I am not going to suggest that losing weight will get you pregnant either but I have done some retrospective mathematics and within 3 days of hitting my goal weight I was, completely naturally. It might be a coincidence. It might not be. Anyway I was fortunate enough to find out just before the invasive fertility investigations started (if anyone wants more details on what that means, let me know… but it ain’t pretty).
The major upside is that a pregnancy that starts at a healthy weight is considerably less risky than one that starts at the weight I was.
As of yesterday Baby O is officially 12 weeks in utero and doing very well. The picture at the top of this blog was taken during our recent scan where he/she was so hyperactive that the sonographer was having trouble measuring him/her. Apparently this is a very good sign. We also saw a strong heart beat and the risk of any abnormalities is extremely low. Especially good to hear for a mom to be that’s over thirty-five!
Essentially Mr O and my lives are about to change completely and irrevocably as we embark on what will be the most intense journey of our lives. We are a heady combination of excited, ecstatic, relieved and absolutely terrified… and because I am me I will be blogging throughout. So from later this week on I’ll be doing a weekly “Bump Chronicles” post about the trials and tribulations of being pregnant.
Hopefully this will clarify why I have been feeling sick, tired and emotional recently, all of which is worth it of course. I wanted to say a special thank you to everyone who reads my blog and who took the time to message me, call me, comment, etc to check if I was okay. It meant the absolutely world to me. I am sorry if I couldn’t be completely clear with everyone about what was going on but the first trimester is particularly volatile and so keeping things under wraps is wise.
I also wanted to thank Mr O for putting up with some of my more unusual behaviour over the past three months… hormones are… special. I love you future dad!
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