I want to live

I'd like to elaborate on one of the reasons why I've made a commitment to lose weight and lead a healthy lifestyle.

As I mentioned in my first post one of the reasons I'm doing this is to provide a healthy way of living for my son. His first birthday is approaching and this makes me excited and nervous. The excitement is for obvious reasons; he'll be achieving a great milestone and will have reached many milestones within this ONE milestone in itself. I am amazed and so proud.

The anxiety comes to the thought of the many other birthdays and things that he'll acheive throughout his life that I want to witness and be a part of and could miss out on if I don't take care of my body.

With reading about Diane Schuler's wrecklessness, knowing how my one of my aunts passed away in her 30's due to a heart attack, my grandmother who passed away from a stroke, my risk of diabetes, alcholism and heart disease in my family, and many other things - a mom could get scared. Schuler chose an unhealthy life and has left her living son motherless and husband without a wife.

My aunt left her daughter without a mother, in fact her daughter never got to know her mother at all because my aunt passed away when my cousin was just an infant.

I never got to know my biological grandmother because she had a stressful life and well...the most of you know how a stroke goes right?

Though my dad began living a healthy life after his first heart attack, he still ended up having a heart transplant. Even though I see my dad as a brave man and his condidtion was mostly genetic it was still hard growin up to see the one man you looked up to, who was supposed to be invincible, with defeat and weakness in his eyes.

Even I had to be induced because I had the beginnings of Preeclampsia which is caused by high blood pressure. We could have died if I hadn't had my OB appointment that day. I could've had a seizure and my son & I could be dead. If that doesn't scare a person what will?

I want to be able to play tag, fly a kite, ride bikes, swim, any activity with my son. I want to watch him grow into a young man. I want to argue with him about music and curfews. I want to see him graduate from high school, college, grad school.......whatever! I want to be there when he falls in love and is brave enough to tell me about it. Heck, I want to be there for him today, tomorrow, and always.

My choices of going through with the pregnancy and raising him cannot have been made in vain. If I don't live to see him grow and properly raised him then what was the point? An example of how to lead a healthy life needs to be provided for him.

The Bambino deserves to live a happy and healthy life with his mama.

I want him to know his mama and I want to know him. I want him to grow up to view me as a strong role model. And as selfish as this post may seem with all of the I's and my's but that's how it has to be. The decision has to be for me first and then I can only hope that this new and healthy lifestyle that I choose will rub off on my son and enable me to be his mama for life.

I want to live.

I choose to live.