Author: Bonnie (SOAM)

My Submission (Jeanne)

Bonnie (SOAM) Before Pregnancy, Belly, Breasts, First Pregnancy, Postpartum, Submissions, Update 13 Comments

I had an unplanned pregnancy at 21. I was scared, I was doing it alone without my daughter’s father in the picture. Throughout my pregnancy I was afraid of what changes might happen to my body. I used to love my body and now I am still learning to accept the changes. I hit my prepregnancy weight and only gained 23 pounds while pregnant but I got stretch marks and things just aren’t as taught on my stomach anymore. I’m hoping that in time the skin will continue to shrink and I love my daughter to pieces so it has all been worth it.

Attached is a pre-pregnancy picture, a 1-week postpartum picture, and then a 4 month post partum picture, as well as a picture of my daughter and i. I don’t have a current one but it’s all the same.

~Age: 22
~Number of pregnancies and births: 1 pregnancy, 1 birth
~The age of your children, or how far postpartum you are: 9 months postpartum

Updated here and here.

Ce la Vie (Anonymous)

Bonnie (SOAM) Before Pregnancy, Belly, Complications in Pregnancy, First Pregnancy, Postpartum, Question, Submissions, Surgical Scar (Non-Cesarean) 5 Comments

Age: 23
Number of Births and Pregnancies: 1
Age of Baby and Months Postpartum: 6 months

My story begins in March of 2008 when I had an abdominal myomectomy to remove a 3 1/2 lb fibroid leaving me with an scar that was much larger than a c-section scar. Then six short months later I found myself pregnant, a huge surprise to my boyfriend and I. We had just gotten back together after being apart for 2 months while he went to AA and anger management bc I said no I wouldn’t deal with it anymore.

My pregnancy was not the easiest pregnancy. I immediately started to have cramping which lasted well into my 2nd trimester, during which time the cramps turned into premature contractions, they told me I had not allowed myself to heal enough from the abdominal myomectomy and bc the fibroid was on the broad ligament that supported everything.

I was a workout fanatic before and during my pregnancy up until I was placed on bed rest. Bed rest was the hardest thing I have ever had to go through since I am such an active person. Once I was released I walked and walked and even danced at 39 1/2 weeks to get my baby here on time or early. As it turns out she was born naturally on her due date at a healthy 7 lbs 11oz and 20 inches.

After I had my daughter I was not expecting all the loose and saggy skin. Since I was so toned before pregnancy I hadn’t even considered the possibility that my stomach would never look the same. Having been heavy once before as a teenager and then loosing the weight, my stomach was always my pride bc it was completely flat and toned. I didn’t get stretchmarks until my 8th month I cried for a week. I gained a total of 35 lbs and lost 20 in the first two weeks. Now I just don’t feel that I have a gorgeous body anymore or that I should be in better shape by now. O and by the way my mother had major surgery 2 weeks after I gave birth and would have died had I not been in her hospital room. Because my relationship is on a precarious ledge in my opinion it makes it worse because I dread the thought of maybe having to go out into the cruel world with a scared, deflated stomach. But I have my beautiful daughter who is the sunshine in my life. Your life truly does change when you have a baby in every way, I look at my peers around me and they suddenly seem childish and young. I have my good days and bad with my stomach and body image, but Ce la vie. And what a beautiful life this is.

I just have 2 questions:
1: Will the sagging and creasing get any better with time and proper toning techniques or will it stay this way?
2: Will the dark stretchmarks around my pelvis lighten?

Any suggestions or comments are greatly appreciated :) thank you for listening!

My photos:
1: My stomach as it is today
2: Pre-baby
3:My Beautiful Baby Girl
4: A blurry picture of my abdominal myomectomy scar
5: My side profile as of now

Flawz

Bonnie (SOAM) Activism, Body Image, News, Positive Body Image/Words of Enouragement 15 Comments

I posted this over at Facebook the other night, but haven’t had the time to share it here yet. It is fabulous. I have long noticed that it is those interesting bits – what a person might refer to as his or her flaws – which I find the most beauty in. A large nose, a crooked smile, too-small breasts… I grieve for Ashlee Simpson’s old nose – I found it beautiful and now I can’t pick her out of a lineup of Hollywood Look-Alikes.

Nobody should look like a paper doll copy of every other so-called beautiful woman. Like those planned communities which mirror every other planned community in the US, women are also expected to have only one definition of beautiful. I prefer older neighborhoods, ones with character and uniqueness, regardless of what that looks like on an individual level. Straight nose, or crooked nose – they are all beautiful, and their diversity makes them MORE beautiful, not less so. A mother’s smooth belly, or a wrinkly one – they have all carried life and they are beautiful, symbolically and physically. The only ugly thing here is that we are made to feel like we aren’t good enough if we don’t fit a particular mold.

I’m embracing my flaws – my freckles (which I have always loved), my dimples (which I never have), my quarterback shoulders (which I’ve only recently become aware of), my weird square chin and those funny lines it has when I smile – I love these things because they are ME. Without them, I would not recognize myself. My flaws make me beautiful in my own way. What are your flaws?

Belly (Kelley)

Bonnie (SOAM) Before Pregnancy, Belly, Breasts, First Pregnancy, Postpartum, Submissions 13 Comments

My name is Kelley and I have a 7 month old son. He is my only child. I was around 135 lbs when I got pregnant at the age of 21. I was a bellydancer with an amazing stomach. During my pregnancy I ate all the wrong things and I am paying for it now. I gained around 60 lbs during my pregnancy. I am down to 166 right now but I hate working out and I don’t know what to do. I have so much extra skin and fat and flab all around my waste. My breasts used to be uneven but now they are completely horrible. I used to feel beautiful and confident and now I seriously HATE my own body. I feel like I will never be able to feel comfortable wearing a bathing suit ever again. I am so young and it really sucks to feel this way about myself. I am attaching a before and an after picture.

Just a few degrees south (Anonymous)

Bonnie (SOAM) Belly, Cesarean, Mom over 30, Postpartum, Pregnant, Submissions, Third Pregnancy, Twins 3 Comments

I had my first two children when I was 21 and 23. The pregnancies themselves were perfectly normal and healthy, but I was pretty depressed because the father wanted nothing to do with them. He tried to convince me to abort both times right up until the third trimester. I left him when our second child was a few months old. I went back to school and got my life together. Then, I met a wonderful man who loved my children almost more than I did. We got a married a few years later and then, learned we were pregnant with twins. I had said I didn’t want to have children after 30, so it was perfect timing. Like my first two, this pregnancy was fairly normal and healthy, but I experienced intense pain in my pelvic. I had something called pubic symphosis separation. My midwife wasn’t familiar with it, but she’d sent me to a physical therapist. I worked right up until the day I went into labor at 35 weeks. I had gone in for a regular appointment and the midwife checked to see if I was having real contractions or just more of the braxton-hicks variety. Turned out I was dilated to four and in full labor – I didn’t even know it. I’d been having contractions for 6 weeks and they felt the same to me.

I’d hoped to have a natural delivery, but both babies were breech. They were born via c-section four hours later. My husband cried as he held his children for the first time. I struggled not to panic and to keep my feelings of complete failure to myself. I had really hoped for a natural birth. Honestly, it wasn’t until I read Colleen’s Ode To My Scar on this site that I began to feel differently about it all.

I have always been plus sized, but after the twins, I shed weight very fast. I now weigh less than I did on my wedding day, but I just have all this skin lined with stretch marks. My husband thinks I am beautiful, and the beauty he sees is reflected in his eyes every time he looks at me. That’s what has helped me come to terms with the amazing body I have now.

This is me at 33 weeks and then today, 11 months pp.

~Age: 31
~Number of pregnancies and births: 3 pregnancies, 4 children
~The age of your children, or how far postpartum you are: 10, 8, 1 year old twins.

My Body 6 Weeks Postpartum (Angela)

Bonnie (SOAM) Before Pregnancy, Belly, Breasts, First Pregnancy, Postpartum, Submissions 13 Comments

23 years old
6 weeks postpartum, 1st baby
225lbs

My name is Angela. Ive been a yoyo dieter all my life. Ive had plus sized years, and normal weight years… (about 130-160 lbs) Ive struggled all my life with it though. My mother would always criticize me about my weight starting from about 12 years old. Funny thing was, I was not fat. Not even overweight really. But I always believed her. Why wouldnt I? So when I ate better and lost a little weight to be 130 lbs at 5’5, (in my teens) she still hounded me, asking when I was going to continue dieting. Imagine feeling FAT at 130lbs. I felt terrible then. Then worse when i would gain weight and realized that I was not fat before, I was fat NOW. During my teens i had never been fat. I would just fluctuate between 130-150 lbs. I realize now that those are nice, normal weights. When I became an adult, I started to gain weight more and more. I would get depressed, thinking I was terribly fat, no one would want me, so I would just eat more and gain more. I got to my highest weight at the time of 215 lbs. I finally became so lonely and sad, I went on a super diet/exercise regimen. I got to 160ish lbs again. I felt great! I loved how i looked, could wear sexy clothes again, and i had huge confidence! I met my now fiance at that time. We met, fell in love, moved in together. He had always been a bigger guy, and as the relationship went on, I gained weight again gradually. in 3 years i had creeped up to 230ish lbs. And he SWEARS he never noticed a difference since we started dating. HELLO? 60lbs?? how do you not notice that? But, he loved me the same, and found me just as sexy as the day we met. We have a great reltionship, and hes done oodles for my confidence. :) But, old habits die hard, and no matter how much he tries, i still feel fat and ugly often. I got pregnant at 225lbs, had a vaginal birth, and since having the baby, Im back to the same weight 6 weeks post-partum. I want to try losing weight again, but im waiting till i get more of a hang on being a new mommy. I look almost the same as before pregnancy.. i have a few more stretch marks, (but im used to them, got em in the early teens from anywhere that i grew!) but my tummy now HANGS and is so ugly. I came to terms with being a bigger girl pre-baby, and was happy with my figure generally…. bigger, but curvy and sexy. Now i feel like i have an ugly hanging stomach and it just totally ruins my silhouette. And the worst part is, Its just hanging skin that I can only get back to normal by having a tummy tuck or something. I try not to look too much in the mirror lately, cause I get too depressed. My fiance tells me i look great still, but its hard to believe. :( But i dont harp on it. I spend my days with my little boy, enjoying the new life we have together. I find myself thinking a little less about my appearance lately, and instead i think about all the things i get to experience with my son. And no matter how my future children look, i will never criticize in the same way my mother had. I want my children to love themselves. :)

pic 1-4, 6 weeks PP
pic 5 1year or so pre-pregnancy

thanks for listening :)
Angela

Mom to 10 month old twins (Ariel)

Bonnie (SOAM) Belly, Breastfeeding, Breasts, First Pregnancy, Gestational Diabetes, NICU, Preemie, Pregnant, Submissions, Toxemia, Twins 7 Comments

I have been engaged to my fiance for 2 years when we moved out of the dorms and into our first apartment together, less than a month later I was pregnant, about a month later I found out ‘it’ was ‘them.’ I found out I was pregnant with twins at an abortion clinic. I wanted a baby but not at that point in my life, not when I was at the end of my teaching program, not before I was married….NOT NOW…is all I kept saying. When I was laying on the table in the clinic and the lady looked at me and said ‘I detect multiples.’ I cried, for the first time I cried because I knew they were here for a reason. There was no history of twins in my family, I wasn’t doing IVF, and I was only 20! Nothing says that I should have had twins. I felt like it was a miracle.

Anyway, I was happy about my pregnancy and told my parents and family when I was 9 weeks pregnant. We found out at 21 weeks that we were having a boy and a girl! We were super excited. It took forever to figure out their names but we finally chose them: Delilah AnnMarie and Leon Jason Paul and we were thrilled! I was going to school full time while my fiance was working full time.. At 31 weeks along I went to my OB for my appointment and he said ‘you are too complicated for the local hospital, so here are all your records, go find another doctor.’ I didn’t get names to other doctors but it didn’t matter because the next night at midnight while I was getting in the shower my water broke. My fiance drove me to the ER and they sent me by ambulance to a wonderful hospital over an hour away. I stayed there for 5 days while they tested me and tested me. I was borderline gestational diabetic and severe pre-eclampsia. At 9am the doctor said ‘there is no way she is leaving. We’re keeping her here until 34 weeks and then we’re taking the babies.’ At 5pm, the same doctor walked in and said ‘we’re having the babies in the morning.’ I was FREAKING out…to say the least.

My sweet baby girl was born at 8:04am and her little, yet bigger, brother was born 2 minutes later. Delilah weighed 3lb and Leon was 3lb 3oz. I saw them for 2 seconds and then they were ran down the hall to the NICU and they lived there for 48 days. They came home a week before their due date. During that time I was recovering from my c-section. It was brutal!

Concerning my weight and body image: I have never thought I looked good. I hated my body. A week before my twins were born I weighted 299lb…that is my highest weight. I don’t know how much, if anything, that I have lost, but since the beginning of the year I have set the goal for myself to love my body and to get to a healthy weight. I know I have a lot of work to do but I feel so much better since I’ve been eating better. I have been eating little to no junk food, no carbonated drinks, eating whole grains, and low fat, low sugar foods.

I’ve included pictures of me in the hospital, pictures of my belly when I was pregnant (all those pictures I keep off facebook) and a picture of me breastfeeding my son (to show how huge my boobs were) and a picture of me last week trying to get a picture of the 3 of us. That one is the hardest for me to look at, because I look so wide. Anyway, I think this site is amazing and will help me love my body.

Your Age: 21
Number of pregnancies and births: 1 pregnancy and 2 births
The age of your children, or how far postpartum you are: 10 month old twins

13 mos PP, and 18 lbs to go… (Anonymous)

Bonnie (SOAM) Belly, Hyperemesis Gravidarum, Postpartum, Second Pregnancy, Submissions 8 Comments

Age: 28
Pregnancies: 3
Births:2
PP: 13 months

Well, I just figured I would share with you a pic of my belly, since I have looked at most of yours. I am looking for some honest feedback about my body. With both of my pregnancies I gained a lot of wait in my 6- 7th month. I had horrible morning sickness that couldn’t be controlled without medication. I ended up in the ER with my second for severe dehydration from the vomitting. I would have to drive with a plastic bag handy because it would just keep coming and coming. Very horrible experience. But once I got the meds i was in heaven and able to enjoy the pregnancy. With my first I didnt get any stretch marks until the 7th month and it was a little little one above my belly ring. Then from 8 months to birth I got quite a bit on my belly. It took me about a year and a half to lose all the weight. I was 175 before preggo, trying to lose weight and 220 at delivery. Yea I was a chunker, lol. It took be about a year and a half to lose the weight, I lost 20 lbs immediately after birth, then the rest just gradually came off. I hit a plateau at year 1 and then I started the gym and the rest came off. I was at 155 before I got preggo with number 2 and gained 5 lbs up until month 7, then I sky rocketed to 215 at birth. I didnt get any new stretch marks which was good, but they were a little pink from being re-wounded so to speak. They are all pretty much faded now. I weigh 173 and have hit my famous plateau. My gorgeous son just turned 1 on Dec 11th. So now I have about 18 lbs to go to be pre preggo weight and am struggling. I eat very very well, protein, nuts, berries, fruit, special k, whole wheat/grain, and I exercise about 4-5 days a week now, but nothing is coming off! I lost 1 lb. a little depressing but I’m sticking to it. These are my pics, and be honest!

020810-anon-1

New Body – Courtesy of Two Miracles (Danni)

Bonnie (SOAM) Belly, Breasts, Hyperemesis Gravidarum, Postpartum, Second Pregnancy, Submissions 6 Comments

Both of my pregnancies were an up and down battle. My pre-pregnancy weight before my first daughter was a beautiful 140 pounds that I was very proud of being only 5’5″. I thought I was beautiful and had curves in all of the right places. A little younger than 18 when I found out I was pregnant, I thought that my world was over, not even realizing that the most trying period would be during my pregnancy. I was only 11 weeks pregnant when the “morning” sickness came; constant throwing up and unable to eat anything resulted in me losing an almost whopping 40 pounds. It wasn’t until later that I was told my OB should have put me on medications to help with the extreme sickness. My daughter was born May 13, 2008 and I weighed 112 pounds before I gave birth. She only weighed 5 pounds 13 oz but I was back down to 98 pounds at my 6 weeks check-up. I absolutely hate my body after… I had no stretch marks but I felt all stick and bones, I looked and felt sick all day, every day.

When I got pregnant with my second daughter, I had gotten up to 115 pounds; I still didn’t feel beautiful like I use to but I was content with my body. Again, the same problem occurred with the sickness, except this time I had a midwife that helped me with medication and even some herbal remedies that were suppose to help. By week 39 I had gained a wonderful 50 pounds… probably alot to anyone that started at their regular weight but I was overjoyed that I had been able to gain my weight back plus some! I gave birth December 17, 2009 to my daughter who weighed 6 pounds 13 oz. With a few stretch marks to add I have fallen in love with my body all over again. I’m now a very proud 135 pound mommy to two and couldn’t be happier!

Age: 20
Number of pregnancies and births: 2
Age of children: 20 months and 1 month

Discussion: Men within SOAM

Bonnie (SOAM) News, Question 51 Comments

There have been a few recent comments here about how we, as women, feel about men commenting here. Above all else, I deeply want this to be a safe place for women – but it is, of course, the internet.

I have chosen to keep this forum open and public for a few reasons, but no matter what options I think about, it all boils down to this: we are on the world wide web. Even if I required membership and only allowed women in, it would not stop men from entering (and likely would keep all the good men out).

In my personal and humble opinion, we all benefit from men coming here and commenting here. Men benefit by seeing reality just as much as women do, and women benefit by hearing that men love reality just as we are so afraid they don’t.

That all said, I do my very, very best to keep the comments here appropriate and maintain the safe feeling. Men do, from time to time, comment, and for the most part they are supportive. On the rare occasion someone is not appropriate, I delete the comment before it’s ever posted.

Now that I’m shared this here, I would like to hear your thoughts on the matter – how does it make you feel when men comment here? Does it, or would it change anything about how you contribute to this site?