GAINING LIFE
Jennifer Joyner is half the woman she used to be — and that’s just the way she likes it | By Jennifer Joyner
T 44 | May/June • 2011
here’s nothing quite like holding your newborn baby in the neo-natal intensive care unit and knowing you are the reason your child is sick. My son Eli was born three weeks early and
weighed 12 and a half pounds. I’d been unable to get my gestational diabetes under control,
and it would take a few days for my bloated baby’s blood sugar to normalize. I put on a brave face as the doctors told me he would be fine and I smiled weakly when all the nurses stopped by to check out my little sumo wrestler. But inside, my heart was crumbling. As a mother, it was my duty to do everything possible to protect my child. Eli was only hours old and I had already failed him. Up until that point, I thought my morbid obesity was only
hurting me. Years of tipping the scales at more than 300 pounds made me almost numb to the daily humiliations caused by my weight. I’d learned to stop caring about fashion when shopping trips became more about finding something that fit rather than an outfit that looked good. I was quite adept at asking for a table seat instead of a booth in a restaurant. I hardly noticed anymore that strangers avoided eye contact or that preteen boys always seemed to giggle when I was around. Self-loathing became a natural part of life, and while I never accepted the fact that I
