Of pregnancy, babies, weight gain and loss, and doctors who do not have a clue

I know, it has been so long since I last posted. Pregnancy led to buying a house and of course to a baby. Both of which prove to be time consuming ventures! Our baby girl is now 11 weeks old. With every day I still look at her in amazement that it actually happened, I am actually a mommy! Whether that means I should be is yet to be answered. Our little girl now smiles at us, coos, and is starting to roll over. She is everything I ever dreamed of and more. I feel I am now doing the work I was always meant to do, parenting.

With all of the activity in the past year I hope to start to blog again more often because I want women out there with PCOS to know it can happen and it did. I know we will not all be so lucky as I have been in getting pregnant, but I would not have given up my dream of being a mommy for anything and I hope others with PCOS will not give up either. In becoming a pregnant women and now a parent I joined the online world of Baby Center where you can join your Birth Month Club, ours is June 2011, and receive daily updates of discussions occurring in your club. There is also a PCOS club, which to me appears to mostly be filled with women who found out they had PCOS after trying to conceive for many months/years/etc. Reading through these discussions has been an eye opener to how lucky I have been in my treatment of PCOS, as there are so many doctors out there who just don't get it. I have read posts of Reproductive Endocrinologists who refuse to put women on Metformin and others who have been told to just "go home and loose some weight!" I am appalled. How is it that in this day in age we still have doctors who do not understand that PCOS is not just a reproductive disease? What about the other side affects? What about the hair growth, the acne, the hair loss? What about the predisposition to diabetes, heart disease, and obesity? What about the fact that without assistance some women cannot loose weight, no matter how hard they exercise or how little they eat? It is truly a disgrace to the medical field that doctors have so little understanding of this disorder.

So my opinion... if you have PCOS (or any other disease for that matter) take control of your life and your disorder. Do not let your doctors or your disorder rule your world. Educate yourself by talking to others, by seeking out a variety of doctors, and by reading everything you can about PCOS. In the end, decide what matters the most to you and go after it. For women who are trying to conceive, seek out all options and try all different approaches, even things that people say will not work with PCOS. Seek out a doctor who really understands and if you are not sure they are right find a second, third, and fourth opinion if you have to. Do not give up because in the end you may just have a beautiful little child in your arms at the end of 9 months! I have tried Chinese Medicine, Accupuncture, Accupressure, massage, and traditional medicine. I have worked out, hired a personal trainer, went through weight watchers, went through a yeast cleanse for 4 months, and tried the South Beach Diet. All in the name of getting pregnant. I considered going off of Metformin but got pregnant while I was on it. Who knows which of these things was effective, which helped me get pregnant, but in the end... here we are!

Now that I am post pregnancy I face the tragic challenge of attempting to loose the dreaded baby weight. I gained 45 lbs while I was pregnant. I must admit that while pregnant I ate with rapid abandon and did not lift a weight or go for a walk... okay I walked at the end to try to induce contractions but that was only for about a week! So, with baby here I have lost 20 of those pounds, leaving me with 40 lbs to loose. No, I can do math, I know 40-20=20, but I was 20 lbs over my ideal weight when I got pregnant. So, I would at least like to loose 30 of those 40 lbs if possible. In an attempt to jump start my weight loss I have returned to the yeast cleanse that I did once before for 3 months. I am hoping this time to go for 6 months if I can, and then in that time I will also return to weight watchers in an attempt to get back to that ideal "135ish" lbs.

So, here today I will admit that I weigh 171 lbs in hopes of reporting along the way how the challenge of weight loss is going! So, please continue to read as I write, give me feedback, and keep your fingers crossed that I can yet again meet another goal.