HOW OUR MIRACLE TWINS SAVED ME!
Jessica Rolley almost died before she had the chance to fulfil her dream of becoming a mum
Weighing just 40kg at one point after surviving on a diet of carrot, celery and ginger juice for two terrible years, Jessica Rolley had almost given up hope of becoming a mum when a pregnancy test inspired her to beat her deadly eating disorder.
When a scan revealed two heartbeats, Jessica, 32, felt she’d been blessed with a double miracle and knew she had to vanquish her demons to protect the two little boys who were growing inside her tiny stomach.
“At one point, my husband thought I might die but no matter what he said, I continued to starve myself and continued to drop weight,” she tells Woman’s Day, admitting she still felt “fat” even when she’d wasted away to a size four dress size.
As her heart began to fail, Jessica went to counselling into 2017, and slowly began to eat again to fulfil her dream of tying the knot with her partner Jonathan, 36.
She started to eat avocados and cucumbers with hummus in a bid to gain weight.
But the most important turning points for Jessica were when a pregnancy test showed two lines and a scan at six weeks revealed two heartbeats.
“The odds were against me to get pregnant after what I had put my body through – it truly is a miracle and I am still trying to process what I have been through,” says Jessica. “They were the driver for me to eat, however it was confronting watching the weight pile on and knowing I had to eat to keep them healthy and to ensure they grew.
‘My maternal instincts took over and I began eating again’
“I was so determined to keep the babies alive and do whatever it took, even if it meant eating my cravings of Vegemite toast and hot chips.
“My children saved my life as my maternal instincts took over and I began eating again.”
Jessica’s eating disorder totally spiralled out of control when she suffered a bout of Bali belly during a holiday to the island paradise in 2014.
“There was a parasite in my stomach after my holiday in Bali, so I began drinking freshly squeezed juice to try and flush it out of my system,” she says. “When I recovered a few weeks later, I noticed a dramatic weight loss and I liked it, which led to an addiction to throwing up after eating and juicing.”
Jessica’s lifelong dream was to get married and have children, but her menstrual cycle had stopped for two years as her bad eating habits started to spiral out of control.
She would drink five celery, ginger and carrot juices a day along with laxatives, tea and black coffee. She even avoided drinking water because of her fear of bloating.
Jessica, who lives in Melbourne, became so weak and accidentprone, she frequently collapsed and injured herself.
“I was hospitalised on more than one occasion from falling due to extreme fatigue, with one of the worst being a fall at a wedding, which resulted in bruising on the brain,” she says.
“I also passed out when lifting a chair and was rushed into hospital, where medics told me my body was shutting down.”
BACK ON TRACK
Jessica, who no longer weighs herself, is now a healthy size eight after gaining 35kg during her pregnancy with fraternal twins.
Despite being bedbound for the last five weeks, she gave birth to two healthy boys at 37 weeks on September 5, 2018.
Hunter, who weighed 2.4kg, and Jaeger (2.3kg) changed her life forever, and she feels “incredibly lucky” to have them.