HeatherO

The band is sure fickle sometimes. I have been going through the same thing (although pregnancy has something to do with it as well). 8.3 cc's was my sweet spot forever, then I cycled up and down until my last unfill was done because 4 cc's was much too much for me. It is a crazy thing but I am happy you hung in there and I hope you are at your sweet spot now for a good long while :0)

It is completely up to your doctor. Some of us were told not to drink for six weeks up to a year. There are a couple problems with drinking early on in calories can be high, carbonation is harmful if you are drinking something like beer, inhibitions are loosened so that you might eat something or eat more of something than what you are ready for, and the biggest problem of all is substituting drinking for eating when it comes to addictive behavior. I would think that two weeks is still way to early since you are still recovering from surgery and your body has gone through quite a shock. You may also find that since your food intake is so low now, 1 drink might hit you harder than you would ever have expected pre-banding.

That makes perfect sense :0)

My stomach growled louder and more forcefully in the early months post banding then ever before in my life. It is not uncommon to feel hunger early on . . . in fact this could be considered a good sign in that you must be healing quite well. If I were to suggest anything it would be to stay on your post-op diet and if hunger becomes excessive, call your doctor about possibly moving up dietary stages to go more towards full liquids or mushies a few days early. However, it would be a mistake to do this without getting your doctors blessing in advance since he wants you to heal properly to get a long life out of your band and avoid potential complications down the road. It sounds like you are doing great . . . and just remember, these early days are the most difficult in banding. It only gets so much better from here once you start getting fills.

It is common for doctors in the US to suggest low carb to start. This would help to get the metabolism going again and break a carb addiction cycle that may be affecting blood sugar. Also it helps to stear you away from low-quality carbs which are highly processed. To stay under 16 carbs a day, most of your carbs are going to have to come from vegetables and a tiny amount of fruit. It sounds like the doctor will be adjusting your carb levels as you go based on how well you are losing, this makes sense to me.

I see you have a birthday coming up tomorrow . . . Happy Birthday!!! So how is it going so far? Was surgery good and did you get your first fill?

Hello Everyone, The Easter egg game is an awesome idea, I will have to try that one in the future. Pamela, You crack me up . . . you must have been having one heck of day to use such an eloquent expression as crap three times in one post the other day. It is funny because I have been doing the same thing recently with “sucks” but I think it must be my teenage child that is bringing it on. I hope you have a great time in La Verne. It is tough about parents. My mom passed in early 2008 and she has been asking me non-stop for the 16 years when I would have another baby . . . who could have known that this year would be THE year, and she never even knew. I also have finally won the battle with obesity for the first in my adult life with the band and will finish graduate school this year as well . . . so it is a big year for me and I know she would have been so happy to have seen it. I feel your pain and understand completely <<<HUGS>>>. Laura, you aren’t the only one with “pains” where it feels like a quick movement is tearing things apart in there. Ouuuccchhhh . . . thank goodness it will be over any day now :0). Kat, I hope you are feeling better soon. It is definitely hard to watch a child when you are feeling uncomfortable. As for DH’s mom, jeeze Louise, talk about getting bent out of shape over nothing important. That would drive me nuts, thank goodness you have more patience than me. Maybe next time she is in the van, you can tell her she is required to hold the door shut the whole way, lol, see if that improves her mood. Janie, investment club meeting cancelled? Lol, I am happy I am not part of any investment clubs right now with the direction my money has gone recently. I don’t even want to read my statements anymore. I feel like I have lost way more money than I made over the last year or two. Terry, I feel your pain. I can’t even remember the last day I didn’t have a little somethin somethin . . . there is always today . . . er, umm, well . . . maybe not since I had a piece of chocolate before 9AM. Judy, PMS luncheon . . . sounds, umm, fun . . . I think. I am assuming that must be an acronym for something other than what first comes to mind, lol. Everyone else I have missed, have a lovely day :0).

ColoradoChick, I am happy to hear that Shane is doing better and might be going home :0). FannyAdams, That clip was great. She was a very surprising performer, thanks for sharing. Plain, you crack me up as always. I also hate when they don't want to tell you how much fill you have, regardless of relevance. It is not for me to compare, but I am just the kind of person who really wants to know the details. I also like to know how I change over time. I found that I could tolerate a much bigger fill in the past than I could in the present. I just like to be involved in my care . . . anything they don't want to tell me just seems silly. It is not like I will run around saying "Ive got more fill than you, na na na nanana" Speaking of which I have 0 fill right now and it kinda sucks, but I am getting by, lol. It is just a reminder of why I needed a band in the first place . . . because I was HUNGRYYYY!!!!

MacMadame, I agree with what she said. I know for me, biking was rough the first few times as far as getting tired and having the quivery jello feeling in your legs when you stopped going from being out of shape and overweight right after banding. However, it didn't take long for me to get used to it and now I think I could just about bike forever. My time left for biking diminishes long before my desire or ability wanes. I would give it a shot and see how it goes.

I couldn't agree with you more. Look at the American auto-industry right now and the bailouts that are needed just to keep them going. Their cost structure was not inline with reality and they could never compete with others in the industry because their legacy/employee costs were absolutely massive. Did employees have great benefits - yes, did employees have great pay - yes, did the company have the tools to survive into the future and remain competitive - no. What good is it to have extroadinary pay and benefits if a company can't survive into the future? It is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Would it be more worthwhile to have closer to average pay and benefits if you knew you would have a job and employability in the future? What do all these people in this industry do when their jobs go away and they have built their lifestyles based on phenomenal pay without having a college education or skills that are not more specific to the auto industry or manufacturing in general? Is there any possibility that they can find a comparable job? Unions were sooo important in the past. If you look at the plight of coal miners, industrial or agricultural workers among others in the not too distant past you can see that they were absolutely essential at a specific time in our history. Especially when employee rights were not protected so well by industry standards and the government at that time. However, in this day and age I think they are more of a hindrance than a help. I worked in a hospital for many years. I can tell you that I had to lay off highly productive, very responsible non-union employees while union employees that did almost nothing to contribute to the organization were protected and I don't feel it is fair. The trouble is they are almost impossible to clean out and become dead weight, not to mention the lack of morale that gets propagated through their inaction. The other side of the coin is that they are also not motivated to ever leave an organization either (consider the pay, benefits, job protection and lack of responsibility) and so they do have seniority. There may only be a very small percentage of union workers that do little more than show up to get their paychecks year after year after year, but they do exist. Well, enough ranting about unions :0). I do have one good thing to say about them . . . gender doesn't matter.

I have absolutely no regrets. I lost 100% of my excess in less than a years time. It was the best decision I ever made and worth every penny as a self pay patient.

I had my 32 week ob/gyn appointment today. I went from a belly measurement of 28 to 30 centimeters from 2 weeks ago, which although smaller than typical for gestational age she is still growing appropriately. I gained 1.5 pounds in two weeks which is actually pretty decent. My first month without a fill I caught up with all my weight gain expected for the first 5-6 months in a single month. That really scared me to say the least but I am happy I am back on track. Total weight gain so far is 20 pounds from 12 weeks when I had my first ob visit to 32 weeks (not including the 5 pound loss in the first 12 weeks). So net gain is 15 pounds - not too bad considering I have less than 2 months to go. If I gain a pound a week for the next 8 weeks, that is only 23 pounds. Even if I go up to 30, I can live with that and feel like I accomplished something good (gained 67 with my first pregnancy). I should lose most of that before I leave the hospital :0). Anyways, I feel like a dork that I haven't updated my ticker. I just don't have the heart to do it yet. 138 was an unbelievable number for me and beyond my wildest imagination of how low I could really go - 158 just doesn't feel as good, lol. Perhaps I should put a pregnancy disclaimer on there, I looked at your blog and it is just about the same issue, lol. Only real difference being mine is more of a short girls rant instead of tall one. :0) I am just aggravated that I wasted money on stuff I don't/can't/would prefer not to wear. I have a quick question on stretch marks. With my first pregnancy I looked like a roadmap. I went from 126 to 193 in less than a year, and I had them all over my belly, inner thighs, inner arms, breasts. This time I don't have a single stretch mark yet. Has anyone else noticed a lack of stretch marks after losing a lot of weight and getting preggers? I was just wondering if it had to do with already having excess skin to help offset the stretch.

Seeing children playing with fire is enough of a reason to involve others IMO. It is ashame that someone embellished the situation. However, it seems like in this case the social workers talked with you, found there was nothing amiss and closed the case. To me it sounds like the system worked as intended. DCF doesn't know what is real and what is not unless they look into it. They don't know what is going on in every home. They have to rely on incidents being reported to know who to even look at. If the hassle you went through was enough to know the system was working well enough to have a child removed from unsafe conditions down the street where "real" abuse was occuring, isn't it worth it?

I can't help but agree with Kat. Yes, you can find cases where abuse doesn't exist and someone is angry and just wants to make someones life difficult. Yes, you can find cases where a child is abused and social workers either take no action or very poor action that doesn't help the child. These are the fringes. Most of the time social workers are trained to try and find real cases of abuse and deal with them in the best fashion they can with the resources that they have. When child welfare is the goal, it can't be all bad. I had a social worker come to my house once when my son was about 2.5 to investigate a black eye. It happened while my son was actually at daycare and was running and sliding on his knees (linoleum and a windsuit make for some fun sliding activites when you are 2.5) and he unfortunately ran into a table. So someone reported it, probably a neighbor since daycare knew all about the hows and they whys since it happened there. Was I upset that someone came to my door . . . absolutely not. I had her in for coffee and we talked about it, cased closed and never saw a social worker at my house again (other than when I had foster children and I was working with the social workers on the other side of the fence). I have been on both sides of the fence and all I can say is that every child absolutely deserves to be protected. The system isn't perfect, but the intentions are good for the most part. If a few false allegations have to be investigated in order to allow help to come to children that really need it, so be it.

Mornin' Vi's, I hope everyone had a lovely holiday. Mine was lazy and relaxing, just the way I like them. I think next year is going to be a whole new ball of wax with a baby :0). Pamela, United States of Tara is awesome. I can't get enough of that series. It is one of my current all time favorites now. I remember reading somewhere that if you put two peeps in the microwave facing each other with toothpick spears, they will grow until one gets pierced and dies a gruesome death of deflation. I will have to try that one day, lol. I have something wonderful to report. I made it through my first Easter without eating a single cadberry caramel egg. I love those things. I had two starbursts fruit chews and half a dozen jelly beans. I can't believe it . . . the only better time in my life was my first Easter banded, lol. By the way, I found a couple of you of Facebook and added you just in case you were wondering if it was me. I know you don't really know my last name. I also do Myspace but I am a little limited in use. I am a very sporadic poster but do use it to keep in touch with friends from afar. :0) Judy, I saw the video of the solo . . . it was great!!! Happy Monday!!!

My DS is wayyy beyond the basket thing now. However, if I give him a gift bag filled with peanut butter eggs and sour worms, some clothing and other things he wants . . . I can actually get a "thanks, Mom." They outgrow the basket but I don't think they outgrow the sentiment if you repackage it in a more adult form, lol.

I would have to guess that the either the parents or the kids were at least aware enough that having teenage boyfriend/girlfriends living together might lead to something and therefore made sure that they had some form of contraceptives available. Out of curiousity, are they still together today and how old are they now? I have always heard that teenage love never lasts, but I am not sure that I know anyone who started off together at such an early age.

I just wanted to say - maternity clothes suck!!! I don't know what it is but nothing fits well, or if it does, it lasts for about one minute until you wash it. Either clothes are falling off of me (not because they are too loose but because lack of waistline seems to be problematic) or they are uncomfortable in the way they fit. I am 5 '3 so a little on the short side but I can't find maternity pants that fit lengthwise no matter what (yet I can find a perfect fit on length with no problems in non-maternity in a size 8 or 10). What is it with maternity shirts as well? They are too long, too short, or your boobs are hanging out with super low cut bustlines, or there is no room for boobs because designers assume that if you have a big belly you can't have a bustline???? Who are they making these clothes for anyway? I wear mediums and a size 8 pre-pregnancy (I love my band by the way). So I am just about as average as you can get anymore. I didn't expect to have such a problem with this. I am officially boycotting the purchase of any new maternity clothes. If I have to wear skirts or dresses to make it through the next few weeks I will. I can still wear my pants with my bella band and a hair tie, lol. I have found that babydoll cut shirts that are non-maternity work just fine if I buy a large instead of a medium. I am just going to wing it. I wish I could have taken all the money spent on maternity clothes and bought diapers instead, lol.

These are great, thanks for sharing.

Wow, the difference is extreme and at only a few hundred bucks it is well worth it. I didn't realize that botox works that well. I am sure I will have the same done in a couple of years.

I think enhanced self confidence is key. When you feel good about yourself, you can't help but want to share it, lol.

I would ride it. To ride heavy isnt the end of the world. Too many of us put our lives on hold waiting to be thin enough to enjoy life . . . but why. If you love to ride, just do it.

It is really stressful trying to get pregnant, specially after multiple IUI sessions. I have a couple of friends going through the same thing and it is rough. I agree about using the juicer. You are already doing V8 which helps. There are also lower calorie juices on the market. I have been drinking a 50% Tropicana orange juice that has minimal calories per cup but lots of Vitamin c and nutritional benefits. Perhaps you can do more smoothies as well which can be quite yummy and filling. Soups with veggies are good as well. When I was doing Atkins years ago, I got into eating pureed cauliflower with low calorie butter and a little salt and pepper or sometimes garlic. That was really delicious, east to eat and a healthy way to get veggies in. I know you said you don't want to hear about the band be loosened, but if you cant eat a normal fruit or vegetable it sounds like you are uncomfortably tight. Sometimes the tiniest fraction of an unfill can make a difference in what you can ingest without losing too much of that feeling of fullness. Good luck with your IUI's. I hope you will be joing our preggo threads very soon.

Congratulations everyone . . . there are so many new preggos to join our thread. There must be something about the beginning of Spring, or maybe it is in the LBT water. I hope you all post frequently to keep everyone updated on progress.

Wooo hooo . . . it's a boy!!!! How exciting, you must be thrilled. Now you can go shopping. That is definitely what I did the week following the news of my babies gender. I am happy you can also get screened for diabetes now. The profile shots must be great :0).