Designated Fat Girl (15 page)

I had to check my blood sugar four times a day, and I had to give myself injections after each meal. With every shot I felt like such a failure, as if I’d done this to myself and to my child. I became really depressed, unable to believe that I’d actually let things reach this point. On my better days, I told myself that it would all be over soon; once the baby was born, I wouldn’t
have to do the shots anymore—I could start to get my life back. I never thought about the long-term health implications; I simply couldn’t allow myself to go there.

I was increasingly worried about my baby’s size. We’ve all read stories about big babies at birth, seen the television news stories about the fourteen-pound newborn. I started to have nightmares that I was in the hospital when a nurse hands me a five-year-old to take home. I so didn’t want to be that mother, and with good reason: Big babies have a lot of health issues. Because my diabetes was not going away, I already knew Eli would have health concerns at birth. He’d have to go to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) so they could monitor his blood sugar, making sure it went down once he was separated from me. That was so hard to contemplate—that my child would need special care because of my inability to take care of myself. I wallowed in self-pity and fear.

Eli was due September 25, but I knew there was no way I’d make it that long. My doctor estimated he’d be about ten pounds, so she scheduled the C-section for the earliest possible date: September 14. I felt like I could live with ten pounds; both my father and Michael’s father were that big at birth. And thank goodness I was having a boy—everyone likes a big, healthy boy, right?

I had such guilt over inflicting my poor health onto my son, and I just knew everyone else would judge me for it, too.

Labor Day weekend was especially uncomfortable for me. I was having sporadic pains, but because I’d never had contractions on my own with Emma (my water broke, but I had to be induced), I wasn’t sure what exactly I was feeling. I called
Michael’s aunt, an ob nurse. She said to take two Tylenol and take a nap. If I was able to sleep, then the pains weren’t real contractions. I took the medicine and took a nap.

I slept for four hours.

When I woke up, I was groggy and sure that what I’d felt was some sort of fluke. I still felt kind of weird, like I didn’t really want to sit down, but I just chalked it up to being big and pregnant. I had eaten dinner and started to settle in for the night when I started noticing that the weird little feelings were forming a definite pattern. I was having real contractions! But I was more than three weeks early … could this really be it? I called the on-call doctor, and he told me to meet him at the hospital.

I half expected to get to the hospital and be told I wasn’t in labor, although the pain was becoming more intense. The nurses checked, and I heard them call the doctor to deliver the news: I was almost ready to push! Push?! I was supposed to have a C-section! I’d pushed with Emma for several hours but had to have surgery because she was stuck. I was sure this baby was bigger than she’d been—how would I get him out?! Panicked doesn’t come close to describing how I was feeling.

The nurses calmly explained that the doctor was on his way and that they would do an emergency C-section. I immediately started to relax … and to get a little excited. I was so ready to meet my son, and so, so ready to not be pregnant anymore. And he was early! Maybe this meant he wouldn’t be so big after all!

It was after midnight when everyone gathered in the OR. The on-call doctor wasn’t one I knew very well, but I wasn’t too concerned. He seemed like a nice enough fellow, so I really
didn’t mind—I was so uncomfortable, I just wanted the baby out, and I wanted him to be okay. As he was preparing me for surgery, the doctor looked at my previous incision. “Jennifer, I’m sorry, but because of the position of this baby, I’m not going to be able to cut you in the same place,” he told me. At that moment I really couldn’t have cared less, and I decided a little levity was needed. “Oh, that’s okay. Not much chance of me ever wearing a bikini anyway!” I joked. This doctor didn’t even crack a smile. I couldn’t believe it! I could tell the female nurses were smiling behind their surgical masks. But Michael said this is also an important part of the man code: A man should never laugh about a woman’s weight, even if she makes the joke. On second thought, I’m thinking perhaps that’s the best policy.

As they all prepared for the surgery, I warned them that I thought the baby was pretty big. They laughed good-naturedly, saying they were sure they could handle it. The C-section was different than the last one I had had. The doctor was working harder—there was more pulling and tugging. Later one of the nurses commented they’d never seen this particular doctor break a sweat before, but this time he had. And we soon knew why.

Eli’s first cry was healthy and robust. I didn’t get to see him right away, but everyone assured me he was fine … and big. “I told ya so,” I said, rather weakly. I couldn’t see anything, so I was listening as hard as I could. At one point I turned to the nurse whose only job was to stand by my head and make sure I was okay and said, “I think I heard someone say twelve pounds.”

“No, honey,” she laughed. “That’s not what they said.”

“Twelve pounds, seven ounces!” a male voice gleefully announced from across the room.

The OR erupted in applause. Several people went over to see them working on my baby. I was in shock, and I think Michael was, too. More than twelve pounds? And he was three weeks early?

Soon they whisked by me with baby Eli in the glass bassinet. He was on his way to the NICU, as promised. I got to see him briefly, and he was a sight: big, red, and wrapped tightly like a burrito. He had a shocked expression on his face, one that I was sure mirrored my own. “Look at all of that hair!” the nurse exclaimed, pulling back his cap. Tufts of jet-black hair stood straight up. So that would explain all of that heartburn! Promising I’d see him soon, they took Eli away and I waited for them to finish closing me up.

In recovery, I didn’t sleep like I had with Emma. I wanted to know how Eli was doing, I wanted to make sure he was okay. Because Eli was in the NICU, Michael couldn’t go be with him, so he was as clueless as I was. Hours later, when they put me in a room, I found a nice surprise. The NICU nurses knew it would be a while before I could go down to the unit to see him, so they’d taken a picture of Eli and printed it out for me. There he was, with all kinds of tubes and wires in his mouth, his nose, and his arm. I wept, filled with worry and exhausted from the night’s events. Michael assured me our son would be fine and I would see him soon.

Eli was born a little past 1:00 a.m., but it was almost noon before I got to see him. Michael wheeled me down to the NICU in a wheelchair—I was just starting to get feeling back from the
epidural. I felt impatient as I went through the sanitizing routine before entering the NICU—I wanted to see my baby now! Michael wheeled me past rows of teeny, tiny babies in glass Isolettes—some no bigger than the palm of my hand. I was relieved my baby wasn’t going to look like that, but I was also a little apprehensive about meeting him for the first time without the haze of a C-section and the bright lights of the operating room.

When I finally reached Eli, the dam burst. He was all alone in his little glass bassinet, no baby on either side of him. Truly, in this unit filled with underweight preemies, he was in a class by himself. I stared at him, memorizing all that I could about my new baby. He was wearing only a diaper, and his chest rose and fell so quickly with his little breaths. He was sleeping, but it was fitful, as if he were missing something—or someone. He’d been here for hours without me, and all I wanted to do was take him in my arms. Only, I couldn’t. He was still hooked up to an IV, and I was scared to death I would yank something out or pull something loose. I touched his arm, my hand trembling. “I’m sorry,” were the first words I spoke to my son.

Eli was in the NICU for three days, much longer than I’d anticipated. His blood sugar levels went down to normal pretty quickly, but then the doctors were concerned about his breathing. In trying to figure out that issue, they discovered a small hole in his heart—something they told me was pretty common and would likely repair itself, but a problem that would require more monitoring. In the midst of all of it, I somehow knew he would be okay. My usual MO would be to panic and jump to the worst-case scenario, but not this time. Something just told me that Eli would be fine.

I, however, was not fine. I blamed myself for his being there, for not being in my arms. He should have been in a regular hospital room with me, being passed around by cooing family members. Instead he had to be monitored round the clock, poked and prodded with every test under the sun. I couldn’t forgive myself. When he was finally cleared to go home, when I could finally hold him and rock him and whisper lullabies in his ear, I still wasn’t okay. My inability to control myself, to get a handle on my health, stared me in the face every time I looked in my son’s eyes. And it almost destroyed me.

The hole in his heart did close. His blood sugar stabilized, and he lost weight. Every day, he proved to be a normal, healthy baby boy. I was so relieved, so thankful that he had been spared the consequences of my lack of discipline. I pledged to do whatever it took to keep him healthy, to keep him safe and happy. I became fiercely protective of him, vowing never to let him down again.

But I was letting myself down each and every day. I couldn’t get my weight under control. No longer pregnant, I ate with a renewed vengeance, to the point of bingeing. I drank soda almost nonstop. On the surface it was my usual routine: I felt bad, and the only thing that made me feel better was to stuff myself with food, even if that “better” feeling only lasted a little while. But deep down I knew this time was different. It was as though I was trying to punish myself, make myself pay for all the damage I’d done. During my worst times of overeating before, I was able to pull myself together and complete at least a couple of days of better-than-normal eating, perhaps try a little exercise. But now, I couldn’t get anything to work at all, not
even for a day. I had never been this out of control, and I felt powerless to stop the path of destruction.

A couple of months after Eli was born, I got the news: My diabetes had not gone away. I was now a full-fledged type 2 diabetic. I wouldn’t be able to put away the blood glucose monitor this time, couldn’t disregard the diabetic diet. My blood sugars had improved somewhat since I’d had the baby, so I wouldn’t have to have daily insulin shots. But I would have to go on medication—pills I would have to take for the rest of my life. And I would always have the stigma of diabetes.

I just couldn’t believe I’d reached this point. I was still pretty young. I had two small children. And I was a diabetic. Forever. Suddenly I longed for the days when my weight was about looking better in my clothes or having a better sex life. Now my weight was causing irreparable damage to my body. And it was all my fault.

As is my nature, I reacted to the news with denial. Surely I could reverse this. All I had to do was lose the weight! Now that I’d had my last baby, I could focus on shedding pounds, on getting healthier. Once I got my weight under control, the diabetes, I was sure, would be a distant memory.

Surely this, finally, had to be my rock bottom. I’d had a twelve-pound baby, for God’s sake. I’d been diagnosed with an incurable disease. Wasn’t this finally the point at which I cried uncle? Wasn’t I finally at the point to take charge and do something about it, for good?

Thus started my renewed attempt at getting diet drugs, and we now know how all that turned out. The whole time I visited new doctors and started new plans, I tried to ignore the
diabetes problem into nonexistence. I didn’t take my medicine, and I certainly didn’t monitor my blood sugar. Doing so outside of pregnancy would have meant I was actually a diabetic, something I just couldn’t face. In the back of my mind, I knew I was further damaging my health, but I forgave it because I felt sure I would soon get a handle on the situation—I was still deluded enough to think I would get on the right path. In essence, I let diabetes run amok in my body, unchecked.

I started to get chronic yeast infections—not just the “flesh-eating virus” ones under my stomach, but the more traditional variety. I’d never really had them before, and at first I was puzzled as to why they kept coming back. One Google search and I figured it out: Out-of-control diabetes leads to chronic yeast infections. I wasn’t monitoring my blood sugar, but these infections let me know that the diabetes was as strong as ever. I couldn’t get rid of them, and I certainly couldn’t go see the doctor. I just sort of … lived with them, which of course, was insane, but so was my very way of thinking. It had been more than ten years since I’d started gaining weight, and I had yet to find a solution that lasted. What in the world made me think I would find one now, on my own?

Reality sometimes has a way of slapping you in the face, but for me, this time, it was a slow burn. I’d seen the commercials about people losing their eyesight because they refused to do anything about their type 2 diabetes. I’d read about a young mother dying from a heart attack, leaving her small children behind. I’d contemplate, more and more, how the deck was stacked against me, health-wise. My mother had had a heart attack when she was just forty-nine. My father had died of a
stroke at fifty-seven. I’d seen three uncles die too early, two of heart attacks; two more uncles were being treated for heart disease. The odds were not good, and the more I allowed time to pass by, the more I let my diabetes wreak havoc on my life, the more in danger I was.

Looking at my children took my breath away. Emma was so beautiful, with big blue eyes that showed the world every emotion she felt at the exact moment she felt it. She was by no means an easy child, and she would need a mother’s love to help her navigate her already overwrought emotions. Eli definitely had his father’s temperament: easygoing, just happy to be here. But he loved me so fiercely, always seeking me out in the room, always wanting to be held and snuggled. Losing me would mean he would never be the same. Neither of them would ever get over the death of their mother. I didn’t want that legacy for my kids. I owed it to them to find the answer, whatever it was. But how? How could I finally figure out what it would take to make it work, especially since I didn’t know what
it
was? I felt like I was running out of time, as though I’d run out of answers a long, long time ago.