A woman "felt like a terrible mum" due to a rare condition which left her legs swelling up and meant she was unable to hold her son on her lap. Christine Murphy, 37, had thought she was just "shaped differently" until she was diagnosed with lipoedema in April 2022.
It causes a build-up of fat in the legs and arms – which caused Christine daily pain since she was 11 years old. Despite leading an active lifestyle, Christine struggled to lose weight from anywhere but her torso.
The condition left her tipping the scales at 25st 7lbs (360lbs) and wearing a size 18 on top and a size 20 trousers. After giving birth to her son, Andy, now five, her symptoms worsened, and she struggled to let him climb onto her lap as a baby – as it would leave her in agony.
Christine's husband, Stephen, 34, a supervisor of a health plan call centre, even has to lay on top of her in the winter to warm up the affected areas of her limbs. Christine is now raising $10,000 for surgery to have the fluid removed from her legs and ease her pain but said she's happy looking the same.
Christine, who works in fraud investigation in health care, from Hershey, Pennsylvania, US, said: "When my son was little, he’d want to fall on to my lap. "It would be excruciatingly painful and then I’d feel like a terrible mum.
"After having my son, even just a gentle touch on my leg was painful. It's very hard in the winter months.
"The parts of me affected get incredibly cold. I ask my husband to lay on top on me to warm my limbs up.
"In my late 20s early 30s I started accepting my body. Fat women are hot. Fat bodies are incredible."
Christine started developing symptoms at just 11 years old despite taking up dance and sport. She said: "When I was a kid, I noticed a lot of people would acknowledge that I looked like different to kids my age.
"I always thought I was shaped different." Christine undertook weight loss programmes but discovered she would only lose weight from her torso, and nothing would budge from her legs.
She said: “I knew early on that nothing was changing the weight in my limbs. People just see you as a fat person.
“They don’t see anything wrong with you.” Christine said kids would constantly pick on her and she would need extra fabric for her dance and basketball outfits.
She would take constant trips to the doctors - who would immediately think she had diabetes and were shocked when they found her glucose levels were fine. In her late 20s, Christine started accepting her plus-size body after finding other people online who looked like her.
She said: “I thought - I should just accept it for what it is.” Christine’s symptoms worsened after welcoming her son in 2017.
She struggled to let baby Andy crawl onto her lap without being in pain – leaving her feel like a “terrible” mum. Christine came across the condition lipoedema in 2021 after hearing other people speak about it on social media.
A lot of what others said resonated with her and she went to a doctor and raised the condition. After going to several doctors, Christine was diagnosed with lipoedema in April 2022.
She said: “After diagnosis it was weird to like a part of you that is technically diseased. I went from loving everything to questioning it.
“I feel like my body doesn’t work the way it as supposed to.” Christine built back her confidence in herself but has decided to get surgery to remove the diseased tissue to help her pain.
She is currently fundraising for the $10k removal surgery – which she is having to ease her pain rather than to changer her appearance. Christine said: “If I looked the same but didn’t have the pain, I’d be happy.
“I really enjoy talking about it. So many people have it and have no idea.” Here is a link to her fundraising page.
