09/18/2024
Connecticut resident and Nuvance Health bariatric patient, Amanda Stevenson says, “I’m now able to enjoy life with my kids and be active. My back doesn’t hurt and I’m more confident.”
Amanda Stevenson always dreamed of being a mom. In 2007, that dream became a reality, but the road to pregnancy and the months that followed sent her down a winding path in search of answers for weight loss and a healthier life.
Living with the trauma caused by years of being overweight
Amanda had always struggled with her weight. She recalled as a child other kids teased her so badly, she refused to ride the bus to school. Despite her best efforts to lose weight, the extra pounds followed her into adulthood. She developed Graves’ disease, a condition affecting the thyroid gland, which is responsible for controlling the body’s metabolism or the rate at which food is converted into energy.
Amanda was diagnosed with an overactive thyroid, known as hyperthyroidism. This condition tends to cause individuals to burn calories faster and in some cases can also increase appetite. According to the American Thyroid Association, some people even gain weight.
After 18 months of medication used to control the disease, Amanda suffered an allergic reaction and doctors ended up completely removing her thyroid.
“When you’re overweight, people just assume you have bad eating habits. I didn’t want to have to explain myself to people and look at them and say, ‘Look, I don’t have a thyroid. My metabolism is in a jar somewhere in a lab being tested and studied by doctors,’” Amanda explained.
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Struggling to start a family do to weight-related complications
Despite the weight not coming off, Amanda wasn’t going to wait any longer to fulfill her dreams of becoming a mom. When she was finally ready to have a baby, though, she experienced more hardship in what would become a very complicated first pregnancy.
Soon after she began trying to have children, Amanda was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome and began undergoing rounds of fertility treatment drugs until she conceived. Her first challenge was over, but there would be many more to come. Weighing 270 pounds while pregnant came at a cost and having no thyroid or true metabolism made managing her weight much more difficult.
She developed preeclampsia after learning she was pregnant. This is a sometimes-fatal medical complication that occurs in about 3% to 4% of all pregnancies in the United States. Being obese increased her chances of developing preeclampsia by two to four times, putting her and her baby at a greater risk of complications. Amanda was placed on immediate bedrest and had to take leave from her job, but the challenges just kept coming and she learned her baby could only be delivered by an emergency C-section.
Despite her hardships, Amanda delivered a healthy baby girl on August 6, 2007. Hoping her health would turn around once her daughter was born, she felt optimistic about her recovery now her dream of becoming a mom was finally a reality. But as the months of new motherhood passed, she noticed a familiar pattern. Her pregnancy weight wasn’t coming off; in fact, she went from weighing 270 pounds to around 304 pounds in just five months.
She knew she would have to take control of her weight and act fast if she wanted more children.
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Bariatric lap band surgery creates weight loss opportunity and paves the way to expand family
Searching for answers, Amanda found the solution she was looking for after attending a bariatrics seminar with a Nuvance Health surgeon. Followed by months of meeting with a dedicated weight management team, including a psychologist and nutritionist, Amanda underwent lap band surgery in September 2008.
The surgery was a success and she was back at work in less than a week. She began to see her weight come off, which was new and exciting, and five months later she would receive even more exciting news: She was pregnant.
Amanda felt excited and nervous, but she was afraid this pregnancy was going to be like the last one. To her surprise, as the weight continued to come off, complications never came up. She delivered her second child with no issues. Amanda credits the ease of her second pregnancy to the lap band surgery and believes weight loss helped prevent her previous conditions from re-emerging.
“I had no issues conceiving after weight loss surgery. There was no need for me to take fertility medicine. I had no issues with pregnancy at all,” Amanda said, “I actually delivered my second child weighing less than I did before I got pregnant.”
Amanda would go on to have a third child. Once again, her pregnancy was complication-free.
Today, thanks to bariatric surgery and changes to her lifestyle, Amanda has lost 131 pounds going from around 304 pounds in 2008 to 170 pounds in 2024.
“I’m now able to enjoy life with my kids and be active. My back doesn’t hurt and I’m more confident,” she said.
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Disclaimer: Outcomes from bariatric surgery vary from person to person. No individual results should be seen as typical.