MONICA RILEY: It does feel strange, when I think like, ‘Oh, my gosh! I am a mom now.
You know, she was growing inside me all that time.’
COMM: It was only a year ago that Monica Riley along with her partner, Sid, wanted to become
the fattest woman in the world and in the process become immobile.
MONICA RILEY: What attracts me to being immobile is, you get to be like a queen.
COMM: But a year on, things are looking quite different for this couple.
SID RILEY: Oh, it has been a 100% change for us.
MONICA RILEY: Looking back, I think the reason why I did want to get, you know, fatter was I guess,
I felt like I was missing something in my life. And I guess, that was one of the ways
to, kind of, fill that void. But then I, you know, realised you know, I want to have a
family. That’s what I wanted to do with my life.
COMM: Monica and Sid recently welcomed a new arrival into their family, their daughter Michelle.
MONICA RILEY: When I first heard that I was pregnant I was, I was shocked. I have had
positives before but it always ended in a miscarriage.
MONICA RILEY: The main jump-start to losing weight was getting pregnant. I knew that I
wanted to have a family with Sid and I knew the steps that I would have to take in order
for that to happen. I knew that I had to lose some weight.
MONICA RILEY: Well, during pregnancy doctors told me to just watch what I eat mainly. Try
to lose some weight.
COMM: Monica has been on a dramatic weight loss journey since discovering she was pregnant.
SID RILEY: I, I have always told her from the get-go about you know, about losing weight.
Don’t do it for me, you know, don’t do it for anyone else.
MONICA RILEY: At my heaviest, I was around 700 lbs and then when right before I had her,
I was at 520 and then now I am 465.
MONICA RILEY: Pregnancy for me, it was fairly easy. Towards the end, it did start getting pretty difficult.
SID RILEY: She.. we had taken, I had taken her to the hospital, her blood pressure was
super high. They were like, ‘Yeah, you are not leaving till you have this baby.’ She
originally was wanting to have a natural birth.
COMM: Due to complications, baby Michelle was born 7 weeks prematurely.
MONICA RILEY: When she was first born, she looked funny. She had these big ol’ blue
eyes and she just looked like a little potato. Her face was all scrunched up and I don’t
know. To me yeah, she kind of, looked like a little alien.
MONICA RILEY: But she is beautiful.
MONICA RILEY: When I first saw her, I just started crying. I sobbed like, uncontrollably.
I was so happy and just so many emotions came through. After she was born she got a
sonogram. They did tell us that she had 4 little holes in her heart. If they didn’t close
up, she would have to get heart surgery. That really freaked me out. But as the couple of
weeks went by, you know, they started to close up on their own. As of now she only has one
little hole in her heart and it’s about the size of a pinhead. So it’s not big at
all and the doctor thinks that you know, it won’t affect her negatively at all.
MONICA RILEY: Even though she was born prematurely, her paediatrician said that she is hitting
all of her milestones and all of the developmental tasks that babies need to do. She is doing
it with flying colours. She is doing amazing.
MONICA RILEY: Hi, gorgeous! You are going to talk to mommy?
TERRI RUIZ: So, when Monica told me that she wanted to be immobile just a little over a year ago.
TERRI RUIZ: I am not going to help you do it.
TERRI RUIZ: But I still love you no matter what.
TERRI RUIZ: I was absolutely devastated and mortified. It’s amazing, it’s amazing,
the transformation in her, in her mindset is unbelievable.
MONICA RILEY: The thought of like, being immobile now, it’s not appealing I guess.
MONICA RILEY: When I look back at when I was eating like, just junk food and fast food
every day, I don’t regret it at all. I don’t think I would ever do it again. I know what
it did to me and you know, I am not for that lifestyle anymore.
MONICA RILEY: I think Michelle did save my life.
MONICA RILEY: The way that I am now, I think it does hold me back. It’s still kind of,
hard for me to get on the floor with the baby and get up.
MONICA RILEY: When I give her a bath, it’s a little hard to get back up from the floor.
MONICA RILEY: You know, walking around with her, it’s still, kind of, difficult to walk
long distances. Michelle played a huge part in me losing weight and still continuing to lose weight.
MONICA RILEY: And now wanting to get you know, some kind of weight loss surgery to further help me.
MONICA RILEY: The only thing that’s putting me off about getting surgery is, I don’t
want to get that skinny, you know. I still like being chubby. I like it. It’s just
comfortable for me you know, being the chubby girl or the fat girl. I just want to be healthy.
MONICA RILEY: So I can be around for her when she is older. You know, I want to see her
go to kindergarten and then, you know, graduate high school, stuff like that.
MONICA RILEY: I know that I have sprung a, another life into this world.
MONICA RILEY: I never thought that I would be a mom. I never thought that I could have
a successful, you know, pregnancy. She makes me incredibly happy. Having her around really
changed my life for the better, you know, with everything, with my weight, with my mental
state that I was in, everything is just so much better.
MONICA RILEY: Just this little baby girl.