I called my husband immediately after receiving the call from the nurse. We couldn’t believe it… we were going to have a baby! Because I’m terrible at keeping secrets, most of our family and closest friends knew our good news within the hour ☺.

When you do any fertility treatment you find out at week two if you’re pregnant or not, and you pretty much know your conception date (aka the date of my IUI, September 25th, 2013). To make sure your pregnancy is going to be viable, you have to get a blood test every 48 hours to see if your HCG level is increasing properly. I have very hard veins to find and I bruise easily… needless to say my almost daily blood tests were not the highlight of my day, but we were pregnant so it was ok ☺.

Now, normally after my 8 AM blood test I would get a call from the nurse within a few hours to tell me my level and that everything was on track. But, one day, during week 6 I didn’t receive a call all day. I had just pulled up to my mailbox around 5 PM when my phone finally rang. My doctor told me that although my HCG level was rising, it wasn’t rising enough for our pregnancy to be viable and that we were going to miscarry… but don’t worry, I would still be going every 48 hours for a blood test to monitor my HCG levels, but this time to make sure they were going down.

I went inside my house and just collapsed. I couldn’t believe it. I quickly called my husband and somehow through the tears he understood what I was saying and rushed home. We texted all of our family and friends to tell them the awful news and that we weren’t ready to talk to anyone yet. They were all so understanding and sent us such wonderful messages of support.

The next day both we called out of work and just held each other, cried, sat in silence and cried some more. We decided that after all my body had been through recently (my surgery, the fertility drugs and now this) we would allow the miscarriage to happen naturally.

So the room finally stopped spinning and I went on to make a full recovery from my surgery after about 7 weeks.

Once I was cleared by my OB, we went back to our fertility specialist. We quickly learned that our insurance company doesn’t tend to cover, well, pretty much anything… only the diagnosis and treatment of the underlying causes of infertility, not the actual fertility part.

After a few more tests on both of us, our fertility specialist determined that our cause of infertility was “Unknown”… which meant no real specific course of treatment, basically just trial and error.

September 25th, 2013 was the date of our first IUI (Intrauterine Insemination, aka The Turkey Baster Method). It was kind of weird to think that this might be the day our child was conceived, and we wouldn’t even be in the same room since my husband would be doing his part 2 hours before me! My husband and I had previously joked about how we’ll know we’re getting his swimmers. When our doctor came into the room he showed me the barcode on my paperwork and the barcode on my husband’s swimmers so that I could confirm they matched. I laughed and told my doctor my husband and I were just joking about that… he wasn’t amused. He sternly told me that they take that VERY seriously. OK. I’m sorry! I was just trying to make light of a stressful, and somewhat awkward situation!

After what seemed like a year (2 weeks) I went for my first blood test to see if we were pregnant or not. After what seemed like several weeks (several hours) we finally got a call from the nurse… my blood test had come back positive. We were pregnant!!

So after a trip to the ER later that morning to make sure nothing was broken or dislocated, I learned that I did just tweak my wrist and my rotator cuff was royally screwed up. But, even though my pain was at a 😭 on a scale of ☺ to 😦, no pain meds for Jayme because I was having surgery in 3 days 😛.

The next 3 days were spent recovering from my untimely injury (what injury is actually timely?) and preparing for my surgery, which would keep me out of work for at least the next 4 weeks.

Surgery day came… after finally finding my vein for the IV it was time to get rolled away. Everyone in the OR introduced themselves, but without my contacts or glasses they all looked like a giant blob.

I always hate getting woken up in the recovery room. Just let me sleep the nausea and all the meds off! Anyway… I woke up to hear my surgery was a success but that during the two procedures I was having my OB do while I was under, a hysteroscopy and a hysterosalpingogram (HSG for short) she found that my right tube was blocked for unknown reasons.

My post-op nurse assured me that I could still get pregnant with one tube… that she has a blocked tube and went on to have multiple children. I wanted to learn more about what this all meant, but mostly I just wanted the room to stop spinning.

So after meeting with the fertility specialist we were told there was nothing he could do until I had the approximate 6 cm cyst removed from my left ovary. My OB had been monitoring it for a while but chose not to do anything about it since it wasn’t growing and I wasn’t experiencing any pain. The fertility specialist was worried about treating anything he might find because it could cause the cyst to burst.

My surgery was scheduled for Friday August 2nd, 2013. While I was doing some new curl and press thing with a bar at the gym the Monday before, I did something to tweak my right wrist.

Later that night I woke up in excruciating pain and walked to the bathroom to get some water. The next thing I knew my husband was trying to wake me… apparently I had fallen asleep… literally… on the bathroom floor! I had blacked out from the pain in my wrist and landed on my left shoulder. Right wrist, left shoulder in pain and surgery on my abdomen scheduled 4 days later… when it rains it pours 😛

Now, this is the part of my journey that I never posted about on Facebook because, well, I didn’t feel it was the right platform. When you post on Facebook people are essentially going to read what you write whether they want to or not because your newsfeed is instant… whereas in a blog, people have the choice to read it or not. I also didn’t want to share this part because I didn’t want anyone to think I was looking for sympathy.

After discussing it with my husband, we finally decided that it was time to open up about what we’ve been going through. We want people to truly understand the struggles behind my weight loss journey… to know how hard it is to obtain and keep the WILL to do something stronger than the WANT to do something. We also want those struggling with the same issues to find comfort in knowing they’re not alone. With that said… here goes…

I had previously mentioned that I had always wanted to be a young mom, but I wasn’t going to put my baby, myself or my family through an unnecessary high risk pregnancy. When I finally started losing weight, my OB had told me she wanted to see me lose 10% of my body weight before I started trying.

By March 2012 I had lost over 15%… it was finally time to try!

And… by May 2013 we were off to our first visit with the fertility specialist…

February 23rd, 2013… in addition to being my parents’ 39th wedding anniversary, it was the day I FINALLY lost 100 pounds!!! 💪👊👍😆

I woke up that morning for my usual 9 AM training session. I ate light before I left, sipped my water as needed and pushed hard throughout my workout. A little after 10 AM Patrick and I walked over to the scale. I slowly stepped on and waited for the results… I. Had. Done. It. I had said goodbye to 100 pounds!! Patrick and I high fived and I proceeded to jump up and down while he bragged to the other trainers about my long awaited and hard earned accomplishment.

The excitement and pride I felt that day was incomparable to anything else I had felt before. I did this. My own hard work, dedication and determination did this, not to mention the amazing support and encouragement I had from everyone along the way.

Finally losing 100 pounds gave me something I had never had before, belief in myself and in the process… that if I stuck with this, really stuck with this I could do anything.

However, that elation only lasted until I slowly started to let life get in the way…

By July of 2012, after having started to use MyFitnessPal to count calories in addition to counting points, still going to Weight Watchers meetings and being down 70 pounds, I decided that I had gotten all that I could out of the Weight Watchers program.

I sent a message to my Weight Watchers leader explaining that and I received such positive feedback and encouragement from her… she didn’t care how I chose to lose the weight, only that I continued to do so.

It was also the time I asked my trainer when he realized that I wasn’t a typical client who goes through the motions and then quits… he said it was when I started questioning the information he was giving me and taking the initiative to do my own research.

By December 2011 I had lost a total of 55 pounds, the most I’d ever lost and had been sharing all about my journey on Facebook. It was at this time that I decided I needed, and wanted to reintroduce the gym back into my life.

We walked into the gym on December 22nd, 2011. Because we had mentioned my husband was a Type II Diabetic we were paired with Patrick, since he was quite knowledgeable about that subject. I was a little skeptical of him at first because he didn’t look or act like my idea of a typical trainer. He wore glasses, which for some unknown reason just struck me as odd, and he was energetic and truly excited to work with and help us, he didn’t seem to see us just as a paycheck.

We started working out with Patrick once a week for an hour- one of us would do cardio for a half hour while the other trained with him and then we would switch. My husband soon got busier at work and wasn’t able to maintain his commitment to the gym, but my once a week appointment slowly turned into 2 and then 3 times a week.

Patrick knew I was doing Weight Watchers, and aside from his astounded look that a banana was 0 points (when in actuality a medium one has around 105 calories) he kept his opinions to himself and slowly started to offer information about nutrition and exercise.

Now that you have the gist of my background, allow me to explain what happened on the first day of my journey to find myself…

I have always wanted to be a mom, a young mom at that. But I knew in my heart that it would be selfish to put our baby, myself, my husband and our family through what would no doubt be a high risk pregnancy due to my weight. So I would always use the phrases, “someday when I lose weight” and “when I lose weight”. Let’s face it… at 370 pounds there isn’t much of a quality of life there. I struggled to get in and out of bed or even roll over. I couldn’t fit comfortably or at all in a movie theater seat, a plane seat or a booth. I could barely walk or stand for long periods of time. Nothing fit and I had a difficult time finding anything that looked remotely what a 29 year old would wear in a size 28/30. I had pretty much accepted that this was my life since I could never seem to make that lifestyle change that I so desperately wanted.

Then it happened… my third friend announced her pregnancy within a couple months of two of my other friends. How could I genuinely be happy for any of them when I was feeling so sorry for myself and my situation… a situation that I created and a situation that only I had the capability to change. After I came to this realization I told my husband right then and there that this was it. I couldn’t live like this anymore… because in all honesty I wasn’t even living, I was just letting the days pass by.

The next day we joined Weight Watchers for my millionth time. I had hoped it would be the last time, but given my track record I highly doubted that. We joined a Monday night class that was geared toward people who had 50 or more pounds to lose, something I had never done before. Suddenly I was surrounded by people who had struggled with being overweight most of their lives and understood that our “normal” was to eat an entire loaf of fresh baked bread or a ½ gallon of ice cream or a bag of pretzels in one sitting just because. It was definitely a very motivating first meeting.

Afterwards my husband and I went out to dinner. Now, as was my usual, the first meal after a weigh-in was always my “cheat meal”. As my husband and I perused the menu he had decided on a salad. When I asked why he wasn’t cheating he simply said because he doesn’t want to. Well a meal of rye toast with butter on the side, egg whites and fresh fruit later… I didn’t either.

Monday May 23rd, 2011 was the day my life completely changed course.

Growing up I was always overweight. I was that one kid in school that everyone teased. Falling through a wooden chair during indoor recess in 4^th grade didn’t help either (in my defense it was already broken!). I was even put in a group for kids with self esteem issues… although that was not the way it was sold it to me at the time… I thought I was special, not emotionally disturbed 😛.

Over the years my family tried many ways to help me lose weight. At age 13 and 180 pounds I was introduced to Weight Watchers for the first time; however, I never stuck with it for very long as I continued to join, and rejoin, and rejoin, and rejoin over the years.

Weight loss has always been, and still is a mental battle for me. The summer before my senior year of high school I volunteered for the Red Cross’ Save a Life Summer Camp. During a field trip to the hospital we took a tour of their wellness center. The people gymmin’ it were mostly physical therapy patients, athletes and medical staff. When I learned that anyone could join I signed up that day. Throughout that year I believe I lost a total of 22 pounds, and went through yet another round of Weight Watchers. I was 18 years old and 200 pounds, but I was in the best shape of my life… or so I thought.

Not long after that came college. I didn’t get into my first choice school, but I didn’t want to live at home for a year and then transfer so off I went to start college as a summer freshman at a school I really didn’t want to go to. You know how people talk about the “Freshman 15”… well I took that to mean 15 each semester… and then some I gained about 45 pounds that year before deciding to move back home and do a semester at community college (yes, I know hindsight is 20/20, but I don’t regret my decision of going and trying it for a year).

When I finally transferred to my first choice school (which is apparently a much easier way to get into a school) I gained another 35 pounds. I was now 21 and 280 pounds… but it was ok because I was in love and my now husband had loved me at my then heaviest weight. Fast forward a few years to our wedding, 25 years old and 320 pounds. And then another 4 years to Monday May 23rd, 2011… 29 years old and 370 pounds.