Age:23
4 months postpartum
4 pregnancies, 3 births(1 miscarriage) (I have a 5 year old, a 3 year old and a 4 month old)
I was 17 when I became pregnant with my first child and I weighed 100 pounds. I was tiny. When I delivered him I weighed in at 140 pounds. By the time he was 3 months old, I was back down to 100 pounds. I didn’t do anything, I just dropped the weight like that. When I got pregnant with my daughter when my son had just turned 1, I assumed I would be the same way again. I gained a lot of weight with her. I delivered her by emergency c-section at 165 pounds. I have never really lost the weight since then. I got down to 155 pounds, but that’s it. My stomach hangs over the c-section scar and I hate it. No matter what I do, it won’t go away. Right after my daughter turned 2, I got pregnant again. At 13 weeks, I miscarried. Got pregnant again about 2 months later and delivered my second daughter in December. I only gained 15 pounds with that pregnancy, weighing in at 170 when I delivered her. I am breastfeeding her, and I lost all the pregnancy weight within 2 weeks…was back down to my pre-pregnancy weight of 155. But I just can’t get under that, it seems. I guess it could be worse. I just don’t feel pretty anymore. I used to be so tiny and now I can’t wear any cute clothes because my stomach hangs out and looks gross. I just want to be able to accept the way I look :-(
You look good mama!
i’m not seeing it in these pictures. your skin is just fantastic!
OMG you look great, I don’t see anything hanging out! You are soo lucky your tummy is one color i have stripes. Be proud of your belly, you look lovely!
I know this sounds odd but I am jealouse of your belly button. Your skin is beautiful.
your belly button still looks normal! lucky!!
Can’t see a single stretch mark there! your body looks great :)
i think you look amazing! three kids??? wow! yeah just give it another year or so and im sure you will look how you want! :) enjoy your angels
You look great! Not overweight at all! I can’t imagine where you could possibly lose 50 lbs… You would be too thin in my opinion. You’re beautiful as you are :)
I totally understand how you feel about not being able to wear cute clothes and wishing you could accept your body. Before I had my baby I always had a relatively flat stomach – now it hangs over like a small beer gut. It makes me feel unattractive and mostly uncomfortable. I don’t have pants that fit except maternity pants…and most of my shirts were all tight…which doesn’t look right anymore.
Its very frustrating and I don’t really know how to dress myself anymore and feel good about myself.
If that is what a hanging tummy does, I wonder what you would call mine…flapping? You do not have an overhand at all. I am 23, I have had 2 cesareans, and I have an overhang. You look great!
You look amazing. You may not see it, but you probably look better now than you did at 100 pounds. Because if you look this good now, you must have looked like a skeleton before.
I agree, I can’t imagine your body with 50 less pounds on it. No way! You look good.
girl you look amazing. I have stretch marks all around from stomach to back from my pregnancy. Count your blessings you have none! It could be a lot worse trust me :)
I think you look great.
But since I know what you mean about the belly ‘shelf’ (I’ve had 2 unnecesarians and two uba2cs with another one coming any day now), I thought I’d offer what I know about getting rid of it. It may not be to your liking, and it hurts initially, if you have feeling in your lower abdomen.
I learned after having a surgery on my wrist when I was 16 yrs old that if I wanted the skin around the scar tissue to move freely and not be stuck, then I had to dis-adhere the scar tissue from the tissues underneath. I had to pull it up and ‘roll’ it back and forth to rip the scar tissue away from the tissue underneath it. I did this with my fingers, slowly over the course of a few weeks,stretching it and tearing it.
The wound must be healed to do this, and it is a medically recommended recovery strategy for surgeries involving parts of the body that have to remain flexible, like hands and feet, but I dont see any reason not to do it also in other areas.
My c/s adhesions were torn during four weeks of intense nightly prodromal labour with my third child, but it was that tearing that allowed for a smooth (1st) labour and also for that shelf to finally be gone. I didn’t do the skin rolling previously because by the time my scar was set in, I was pg again. So it was a gift that my labouring did the work for me anyway; I would have skin-rolled it after the birth had it not been freed already.
It doesn’t feel good at first to do the skin rolling, but if you can tolerate the feeling, it starts to feel like good pain- productive and with a purpose. It may also be better for you to have someone else do it for you so that you can remain as relaxed as possible.
Oh, and because you’ll be releasing tight fascia that has been dehydrated because it wasn’t freely moving, you will want to make sure you are always very well-hydrated during this process and drink a full glass of water after every ‘rolling’ session. If you don’t, it will take longer and some areas will stick again right away. They are not actually stuck mechanically like the scar tissue, but they won’t move freely because there is not enough water to lubricate them.
This was completely effective for my wrist; I regained full mobility after only two weeks, which is unheard-of for the type of surgery I had, but I was VERY diligent with my recovery regimen (I am an artist and played guitar and volleyball at the time- I needed my wrist to work!).
I do think you look great. :)
You don’t look fat or overhanging at all just smooth and womanly. As for not getting back to 100 lbs, it might be that your body finished its own growing during the time that you had your second & third babies and your miscarriage. I was very skinny through high school, 105 lbs, and up until about age 20–size 2 too small etc. Well around 20 I “filled out” and gained 25 lbs and it wasn’t even flesh or fat on my body but my actual frame and bones that grew, I kept eating healthily and exercising and at first blamed my body but one day standing in front of a mirror I realized I could still feel my hipbones sticking out and that even if I could carve all the fat and flesh off that the bones would still be too big to fit into my high school jeans, prom dress, etc. so it was ok.
Later in life I had my two kids and I can tell you that my “baby weight” is much lumpier & bumpier than you! You know you are a woman, mother of three children, adult in every way but are you maybe still expecting your body to fit into junior size clothing? The difference between juniors (7,9,11) and misses (6,8,10) isn’t the inches but the curves! Clothes that fit one’s curves are so much more flattering and don’t squeeze you into having skin pooshing out.
My budget for clothes is really tight so for a while I was shopping at Wal-Mart & Old Navy sales but then I realized that the misses sizes there made me feel old while the juniors maybe fit on the hips but too loose on the waist, etc. So now I scour the second-hand stores and garage sales for the brands that have a more stylish fit in the misses sizes, it takes more work on my part but I feel a lot better about how my clothes look on me….just a hint in case you are interested…