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.

20 Weeks and Going Strong

It seems like a lifetime has passed since I last posted to my blog! So much has been happening and time is passing so quickly. Today was our 20 week appointment with the OBGYN. I actually do not turn 20 weeks until Friday, but close enough. In the past few months we have been house hunting, preparing for the baby, and working our butts off! Life seems to always have another surprise around the corner.

But, today was a day I will never forget. We put an offer on a house (don't know if we will get it yet) and we found out that our little baby is... A.... GIRL!! My husband and mom have been saying since the start that it is a girl, and they were right. I am yet to feel my baby move, but little flutters are happening every now and then. It is amazing I have not felt her yet, she could not stop moving during the ultrasound today! Today we saw her feet, her brain, her legs, her lips and nose, and her hands... even though she only wanted to show us 3 fingers for a picture... we are pretty sure all 10 are there! Life is certainly coming together, for the baby and our soon to be family of 3!

In the PCOS realm, not much is happening. I do find that I struggled a bit more than my coworkers (who are also pregnant) to get my energy back as quickly during my second trimester. But, it is starting to go up and I actually made it to the gym today for a walk on the treadmill, at 5 AM! I, of course, am gaining weight. But that is expected so I will deal with getting the weight off once the baby is here! The biggest problem I have had with PCOS is getting myself off of the Metformin. It is funny but, prior to getting pregnant all I wanted was to get rid of the medications and go all natural. But, now that there is a life growing inside of me I have the greatest fear that if I stop the Metformin I will loose the baby. My OB/GYN told me to go off of it a month ago, and I have yet to do it. We discussed it again today and he has instructed me to go off of it again. So, I will try it again and see how it goes and hope and pray that nothing goes wrong!

I think the most frustrating thing is the lack of research by the medical community on the effects of Metformin during pregnancy and the effects on the fetus. There really is not a lot out there, just a few studies on rats, that explore PCOS, Metformin and pregnancy. But, I have to say this. I never in my life thought I was going to get pregnant. I spent so many nights crying thinking I would never be able to have a child. Yet here I am, 20 weeks in... half way through, and all I had to do was take care of myself and it happened. I hope all women with PCOS will see that if you start to take care of yourself good things happen... like babies! I still carry the fear of miscarriage on a daily basis and remember that I have a higher risk of losing my baby at any time during this pregnancy than anyone else I know who is pregnant. But, I can't help but be confident and hopeful that our baby will be born healthy and happy. In my heart I know, that is how life is supposed to go.

8 Weeks and going strong

Okay, so technically as of yesterday I am 9 weeks along, but here is our 8 week ultrasound! The past few weeks have been good. I am finally moving past the morning sickness, which will hopefully stay away for the next 7 months! There have not been any more "emergency visits" to the OB/GYN, which is good news. But, there are occasional pains, odd occurrences, and gas, lots of gas. Being pregnant makes you really wonder if you ever knew your body at all, because things start to feel completely different, odd, foreign. My husband has reminded me "you are growing a person inside of you. You have to expect that would be a little uncomfortable at times." Wow.... it's true.

I don't know that it has truly hit me yet. I think a part of me still does not trust that this is really happening or that it will really continue to happen for the next 7 months. In the back of my mind I keep thinking that PCOS will cause something to go wrong. I forgot my Metformin the other night and panicked the next morning when I realized. But, so far so good.

I am not yet showing, my belly is still small (okay it was never small, but it is the same size it always was!), and my pants still fit, for now. Last weekend was the first weekend that we allowed ourselves to start to look at baby stuff. We bought a onsie to give to Erik's mom, which I am going to iron on a decal to that says "I Love Grandma." This is our plan for when we tell her I am pregnant at Thanksgiving. Then, I actually went shopping for maternity clothes, since my mom continues to remind me that "one morning you will wake up and nothing will fit you." She was super sweet though and bought me all of my maternity clothes. I feel very spoiled, and now I know just how spoiled this little baby will be.

In the area of PCOS and pregnancy, I have been reading quite a bit of information on Metformin and Pregnancy. Supposedly there are not a lot of studies that talk about how long you should stay on the Metformin, really it is still up for debate. Some doctors will leave women on the medication for the entire pregnancy, while others will have you stay on for the first trimester, while others take you off the moment you test positive for pregnancy. I have elected to stay on it, much to the contrary of my prior thinking before I was pregnant. My thought is this: my body relies on the Metformin to regulate my testosterone/insulin resistance/hormonal balance. If I go off of it now, what is to say that my levels will not spike and I will not end up with a miscarriage? So, after speaking with my endocrinologist, I will continue the Metformin at least through February, when my next appointment takes place. I am not sure this is the right choice, but again, I feel like either way there could be potential downfalls.

The other pregnancy reading I have been doing is about Fetal Origins. It is very interesting research coming out that talks about how much impact a mother truly has on the fetus during the 9 months in utero. Right now I am reading about food and the fetus. It is so interesting how many different warnings and dietary restrictions women have been placed on in the past 100 years. But, it is definitely making me think about how I eat and what I am doing. Luckily, I am not addicted to caffeine or soda, so giving up the "bad things" has not been difficult.