Hitting the wall.

395 lbs. Wow. Just say that. Three hundred and ninety five pounds. Can you even wrap your head around it? No, cuz it's freakin 395 pounds! You can't wrap ANYTHING around THAT! It was last summer, 2010 when my little 5 year old Hannah asked me if I would help her learn to ride a bike without training wheels. Holy cow! My baby was growing up! I was ecstatic. Daddy and I bought the bike, helmet, pads, ALL the gear and she was ready. I steadied her and counted 1, 2, 3 and let her go. She immediately fell over. "You have to run with me and hold the back of the seat mommy", she said with a "duh" tone to her voice. Run. Uh, really? Wall, Jenni, collision. I was too fat to teach my baby girl how to ride a bike. My heart died a little that day. I sunk into a pretty deep depression for awhile after that. Not only did I have the weight of the situation on my shoulders I LITERALLY had the WEIGHT of the situation on my shoulders.  With the depression came the pain. Not emotional, although there was plenty of that, but physical pain.  When you weigh that much, everything hurts, EVERYTHING. It's tiring to even get out of bed. I would become breathless getting dressed and sweating before I even left the house for work. Shortly after that I was diagnosed with sleep apnea. Sleep apnea, for those of you who are not familiar with the disease, is where your airway becomes blocked (usually by fat) and you basically stop breathing during sleep. Fabulous. So now, I weigh 395 lbs, I am depressed, I hurt EVERYWHERE, and I get to sleep with a sexy machine strapped to my face to help me breathe! All this, and the voice inside my head telling me, "you chose this Jen, you totally chose this."
Well, bite me, little voice! I'm done. I started to tear down that wall, brick by brick.
In 2004, after 5 years of trying to get pregnant, I had decided that if I was not with child by the end of the year, I was going to have Gastric Bypass surgery. 12 months later Hannah was born. It was not the right time for the surgery, that became evident. Fast forward 7 years and two children and probably 100 lbs to July 2010, the time had come to revisit the idea.