Jessica89

[font=comic sans ms,cursive][b][size=4][color=#FF0099]Hey everyone! My name is Jessica, but most people just call me Jess. I am from a small town in Michigan and I love it here. I am married to my highschool boyfriend, we have been married since October 16th, 2010. We had our frist child 11 days after I graduated highschool on June 12th, 2008, and her name is Bailey Marie. First I am going to tell you a little bit more about me then I will explain my history with obesity. I was a swimmer for 12 years. I swam all 4 years on our varsity team and lettered all four years. I was a long distance swimmer. I also use to ride horses, I had a horse from 8th grade till 9th grade and she passed away when I was 15. I havent really had any time to get back into the horse stuff since I got pregnant my senior year of highschool. Some of my hobbies besides riding horses and swimming are: scrapbooking, kayaking, camping (in a cabin not a tent), listening to music, working out, playing Just dance on my Wii, going to the park with my daughter, photography, going out with my girlfriends, having bonfires. I have 1 sister who graduated in June 2012 and is going to Michigan State University for Criminal Justice. I also have a brother who was killed in Bahgdad, Iraq on Christmas day of 2006 when he was 19 years old. His vehicle was hit by an IED (Improvised explosive device). I miss him a lot. My parents and I are extremely close. I work for my dad at his Verizon Wireless store and have been here now for 4 years and love being in sales. [/color][/size][/b][/font]

[font=comic sans ms,cursive][b][size=4][color=#FF0099]My history of obesity and how I got where I am. In 5th grade I believe is kind of when it started...I was always bigger than my friends but I was also really tall too. In middle school I started getting teased about my size, and actually now that I look back and remember how small I was in middle school compared to now I am not sure why I got teased so much. In 8th grade I started making myself throw up and that went on for about a year and a half. I definitely lost weight....but not the healthy or right way. I stopped doing that and promised myself I would never do it again....and I havent. When I was a junior in highschool my brother was killed like I said in the paragraph above. It was devastating and I went through a deep depression and the weight started packing on quickly. Then 9 months after Andrew was killed I got pregnant with my daughter and gained 47 pounds during my pregnancy. After I had my daughter the weight was soo hard to lose. Life just gets in the way a lot of times. I was 18 and raising a baby and getting more and more comfortable with my boyfriend (now my husband) and kind of felt like for one I lost control and secondly that he loved me so why care what I looked like. We satrted trying for another baby in March of 2011 and tried for a year straight. Nothing was happening and I tried everything to get pregnant... except fertility treatments. I went to my OBGYN and asked why this was happening and if I could get something to help it along. She told me it could be due to my weight and that they didnt feel comfortable giving me fertility drugs until I lost a significant amount of weight. I was ashamed that my weight might be the reason for not being able to give my husband another child or my daughter a brother or sister. At that point I knew I had to do something about it and started looking into surgery. The first thing I thought I wated to do was Lap Band. But I found out some more information on it and decided I wanted something that gives you faster weight loss and decided to go with gastric bypass. Through this whole journey I have thought that I wanted gastric bypass and was under the impression that the sleeve was for people that are 400 to 500 pounds and wasnt an option for me. I then met with my surgeon and she thought the sleeve was the best option for me because why would I want to re-route my intesitines if I dont have diabetes and I am so young. So thats when I started really looking into sleeve and found this site. And I am proud to say that the sleeve is my final decision and I believe it is the right one for me. :) [/color][/size][/b][/font]


[font=comic sans ms,cursive][b][size=4][color=#FF0099]Also, I am really hoping to make some new friends on here. Not that I dont have a lot of friends already but I definitely dont have any that are going through this process and its always nice to talk to someone thats been there. [/color][/size][/b][/font]