ShrinkingMama

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Hi all! My name is Carisa and I live in New Jersey. I'm a proud police officers wife for 4 years now and we have 2 AMAZING children! My daughter Ava is 3 1/2 and my son Joey is 22 months. My family is my WORLD & my everything and the main reason why I'm going to have VSG. I'm a stay at home mom and although everyday isn't rainbows & cupcakes I wouldn't have it any other way![/font][/color]
[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]So, let me tell you how I got to where I am today. I was not overweight as a child nor a teenager. In high school i was 140 lbs throughout those 4 years. No matter what I ate I never gained a pound! And let me just tell you that I did eat everything and anything I wanted. My family is Italian and as many of you fellows Italians know, everything we do revolves around FOOD! Anyways, after high school I got into a bad relationship and I think thats when I started to gain weight. We would eat CRAP food at 3am at least 3 times a week. I was never one to work out. Honestly, I hate any kind of exercise. So anyways, I finally get out of that relationship and in the end of that I probably gained 40-50 lbs. I did weight watchers a few time but I never lost a real significant amount of weight.[/font][/color]
[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Then, in October of 2007 I met my husband. By the time I got pregnant with my daughter, I was 200 lbs. (BTW, I'm about 5'6) So, while I was pregnant, I did what any other pregnant woman does. EAT! Plus, during the last 3 months of my pregnancy, I was on STRICT bed rest. When I was about 25 weeks I started going into labor. They put me on medication to stop the labor and the bed rest. They gave me steroid injections to increase the babies lung development in case she did come premature. So the bed rest didn't help the weight gain since I was only allowed to get up to go to the bathroom. Well, I gave birth on January 15, 2009 to a beautiful, healthy (FULL TERM)baby girl, weighing in at 240 lbs . I think I lost about 25 lbs afterwards. Definitely not the whole 40 lbs. Then, I tried Weight watchers ( again) , Jenny Craig, diet pills, etc. Once again, never lost anything significant. 22 months later on November 14,2010, I gave birth to my son. ( NO BED REST THIS TIME) I only gained just about 20 lbs during this pregnancy.(THANK GOD) So now I'm back to 240. So here I am, with 2 kids, heavier then I have EVER been. So again, I loose about 20 lbs. Tried weight watchers (YET AGAIN), diet pills again, jenny craig again, Overeaters anonymous, hypnosis slim fast, etc. NOTHING HELPED. This summer we took the kids to Hershey Park. I wanted to take my son a ride and they made me get off because the seatbelt wouldn't fit around me. That just KILLED me. That was, I think, the straw that broke the camels back. Obviously nothing else was working so I decided I needed to do something drastic.[/font][/color]
[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]So here I am, sitting here weighing 255 lbs. After going to 2 other doctors ( & seminars) I finally found my surgeon. And I LOVE HER! In the beginning, I had FULL intentions of having LapBand. However when I went to meet with Dr. Schrope (my surgeon) and she told me how much better results she has seen with the VSG and that so many people come back to her with the lapband and say " Get this out of me" and then do the VSG. There was just so many things that I really didn't want to deal with, with the lapband. The only thing I was really worried about with the VSG was the surgery itself because I've never had any kind of surgery. Like she said, if I'm going to do this, do it right the first time. So thats what I'm going to do! And I'm super excited! I'm meeting with the nutritionist next week, have to get the blood work, endoscopy, etc.[/font][/color]
[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]I can't wait to start my journey to my new life!! My family deserves the best "ME" , and so do I!![/font][/color]