A woman who turned to food to smother the grief of having eight miscarriage has lost three-and-a-half stone.
In her worst moment, while drunk at a party, Helen Harrington told friends she killed babies, as she battled with her self-esteem and body issues.
She gave up any hope of being a mum and even told her husband he had her permission to leave her.
Helen says she then turned to food to smother her growing grief.
She said: “I was absolutely devastated. I was angry with my body because I felt it had let me down, and I was angry with myself because I felt I had failed as a woman.
“I remember being very drunk at a New Year party and telling everyone ‘I kill babies’.”
Helen even told her husband, Dean, that if he wanted children he could leave – and she wouldn’t blame him.
Now, the 53-year-old former nurse, from Halewood, Merseyside, has lost 3½ stones and is happier than ever before.
She said: “I’m the ‘best Helen’ I have ever been.
“I’ve lost weight, I have finally got the family I have always wanted and life is amazing. At last, I don’t feel like I’m a failure.”
Helen had never had a problem with her weight.
If anything, as a child, she was skinny and underweight – “my mum would try and feed me up with milk and eggs” – but marriage, her traumatic attempts to become a mum and divorce from her first husband would see her piling on the pounds.
She said: “Up until I was 18, I was tiny.
“I got married for the first time at 21, and that was when I started putting on weight. At first, it was because I was happy and content. It was 1988, the era of the dinner party, and we were very much into it. It was our way of socialising.
“But I was also a crisp demon. I’d think nothing of having five packets of crisps for my lunch."
Yet that was nothing, until after she suffered four miscarriages in 18 months and saw her nine-year marriage collapse and end in divorce.
Helen said: “It was really hard, I held on to each pregnancy until four to five weeks and then start to bleed and lose it. People would say ‘well, at least it happened early on’, but to me that didn’t make any difference.
“As far as I was concerned, every single time that pregnancy test had a stripe across it, to me that was a bouncing blue-eyed baby on my knee. And, every time I lost one, my hope would dip a little bit more.”
After three miscarriages, Helen was referred for tests and diagnosed with antiphospholipid syndrome (APS or “sticky blood”) in which the immune system produces abnormal antibodies that make the blood “stickier” than normal.
She met Dean, who she describes as “the man of my dreams”.
“I was happy. Dean was – is – my soulmate and I thought I was finally going to have this family I’d longed for. I’d get pregnant, have treatment and we’d be up and running,” she smiles. “I had told Dean about my issues but neither of us had had any worries at all about it not being okay.”
The couple tied the knot when Helen was 36 and tried for a family almost straight away.
But within a year, in spite of treatment, she had suffered four miscarriages in 12 months.
Helen said: “I was devastated all over again. I managed to keep one pregnancy until 12 weeks and, for once, I thought that was it.
“My mental health started to deteriorate badly. I went down and down.
“I’d discovered, too, that I had what are known as ‘killer cells’. NK cells populate the inner wall of the uterus during formation of the placenta and are known to be a major cause of miscarriage.
"We added treatment for that which included steroids which made me balloon, to the treatment for sticky blood. But nothing worked.
“After the last miscarriage, I sat down and said ‘I’m never going to have a child of my own’. It’s hard to say how it makes you feel but, amid the anger, I was sorry for Dean, because I felt I had let him down, too. Me and my body that didn’t work.
“I told him that it was me, not him, and that, if he couldn’t cope with not having children, if he wanted them, he could leave me and I’d understand. But he told me he loved me and that it didn’t matter. He was going nowhere.”
Eventually, they did have a family, a boy and a girl, after they decided to adopt.
“That all happened really quickly and we got a little boy and a little girl, brother and sister, aged four and three. We were thrilled.”
But Helen’s weight continued to soar as her mental health plummeted.
“We were really happy, our family was perfect and we had great days out and enjoyed our lives together,” admits Helen. “But I think the stress of what I’d been through just came crashing down and I suffered from anxiety and depression and, having put on and lost weight previously, all my bad habits returned.”
“I went from 14st to 10st 5lb.”
Helen said: “I feel like a new woman. I’m confident, happy and healthy – I’ve got loads of energy … and I feel I’m back in control.
“I have finally got everything I wanted – a loving husband and an amazing family, and a dream job as a Slimming World consultant, so I can support others to lose weight and make the lifestyle changes to stay slim and healthy forever. I’m so lucky.”
