Author: Bonnie (SOAM)

I had nine months between pregnancies. I weighed 133 before Pregnancy #1 and 143 before Pregnancy #2.

Here I am, 5 months postpartum with #2 and weigh 140. I doubt I’ll ever get back to how things were, but that’s okay.

Thanks for the site!

Thanks so much for having this site, until a friend showed this site to me I was under the false impression that it was ‘rare’ to end up with as many stretchmarks as me. Now it turns out its actually more common and I feel much better about myself. I was worried about people seeing all the stretch marks but now I realize it just means I had a baby..absolutely nothing to be ashamed of thanks again!

Here’s me at 35 weeks pregnant:

And here I am now and my son is 16 months old:

When I first got pregnant, I wasn’t the happiest with my weight, but I immediately relaxed about the whole thing and felt pretty good through the first six months. This was at 6 weeks.

I gained over 60 pounds by the time I gave birth to my 9 pounder, at 41 plus weeks. This was the last picture I took pregnant, other than some nude shots of me laboring that I’m sure as hell not sharing.

Now, it’s 6 months later and I sometimes feel good, sometimes bad…But mostly I am glad that my FACE is at least back to pre-preg shape!

If not for the stretchmarks, I could confuse this with pics of me 12 weeks pregnant.

Thanks for doing this!

I had my two babies fifteen months apart, both full term (41+ weeks), in my 30s. Both were large babies, over 9 and 11 pounds each. I don’t have any pictures of my body from my first pregnancy. I wish I had done belly shots, and encourage anyone waffling on this to do it! I was up to 210 pounds at the end of my first pregnancy with my daughter. It must have been a lot of water put on gradually. I was down to 165 pounds when she was only three weeks old and 145 pounds when she was five months old.

Here I am when my daughter was 7 months old, about four weeks after conceiving my son.

I was up to 195 glorious pounds when I birthed my son. Here I am at 40 1/2 weeks.

It took longer to drop the baby weight this time. It came off when I started the night weaning process when my second baby was about a year old.

Here I am about a year and a half postpartum at 142 pounds. I have been nursing continuously for 33 months now (nursed through pregnancy and tandem nurse now). I have mixed feelings about showing my breasts, but in the spirit of this wonderful site — my breasts are very asymmetrical. The larger breast produces more. I wonder what will happen when they wean.

You can see the varicose veins that I earned in my second pregnancy. These are mostly in my left leg. My skin is somewhat loose but seems to be improving gradually.

I was lucky to avoid stretch marks. I have them on both breasts, but they are not noticeable. They are mostly hidden by the sag.

I will be having major pelvic floor reconstruction surgery. But I don’t want to send a picture of that change.

This site is amazing. Thank you for allowing me to participate.

I have to say that I have felt extremely liberated since viewing this page. It is SO nice to know that I am normal. I also never thought of my stretchmarks as a right of passage, but I have been very awakened by reading this page. I am 23 years old, and got all of my battle scars with my first child at the age of 18. With baby #2, nothing changed much. I am beginning to feel comfortable in my body, and want to thank everyone that has posted here. This is my about 10 minutes ago.

Such a beautiful entry here by Jenny. Go check it out!

I love this site. It’s great. I was facinated by becoming a mother and how it changed my body. I was also very strong willed and determined to make the best of each stage of my pregnancy, including post pardom weight loss. I worked out and stayed in shape until the end of my pregnancy when I got so tired and truly felt like it would never end. I ate a lot of really bad foods and packed on an extra 20 lbs after I had already gained 30 during the first 8 months. I gained 20 lbs in the two months before I got pregnant so that put me up to 70 lbs total. When I gave birth to my son I was 205 lbs. He was 7 lbs 4 oz. I was determined to undo what I had unnessesarily done to myself. In the next 5 and half months I worked relentlessly on diet & excersize until I lost 84 lbs. These are my pictures.
(This is me at 10 weeks preggo at about 150 lbs)

This is me at 39 weeks pregnant 2 weeks and 1 day before my son was born. I was about 197 lbs here.

And Here is my picture journey of weighloss post pardom. I wished I had kept the baby in the background throughout the weeks, that would have been cool but I didn’t realize I was doing it until much later.
(This shows me 1-25 weeks post pardom).

(One more front pic 5.5 months post pardom).

Oh and here is a neat picture I photoshopped in of me at 36 weeks preggo at abotu 195 lbs, and about 4 months post pardum at about 135 lbs.

My baby’s website is https://www.alv2.com/
Thanks for letting me share. : )

ETA a closeup of her stretchmarks here.

This is at 36wks pregnancy. I gained 39lbs and my son was a whopping 8lbs 12oz’s!

And this is 6 1/2 months postpartum

Good morning!

When I was about 20 weeks pregnant with my first son (now 2) I started to get stretch marks. I was slathering on every lotion I could find. i was bummed because my mom didn’t get but like 2 with my sister and I, so I figured my chances were pretty good.

not so much. Once they started, i couldn’t stop them. When my husband and I had my mother in law take some belly pictures for us, she asked if we wanted to do any “naked belly” pictures, I said no, and my husband chimed in with “Oh she doesn’t have a normal pregnant belly, she has so many stretch marks!” I think we both wanted to choke him, but then realized it wasn’t his fault. I mean whenever you see a picture of a naked woman most of the time they have been airbrushed beyond belief and there are no stretch marks.

When I got closer to delivering my son, that’s when I finally got the courage to take pictures of my “naked belly” I remember standing in front of the mirror in total shock and just marveling at the fact that our son was in there and we would be meeting him anyday. Of course I didn’t like the stretch marks but what a trade! I’d take some unsightly skin for my awesome son anyday.

The stretch marks that were once a bright red had faded to a soft shimmery silver color and I usually forget about them. Sometimes though when I am lying in bed I can trace them with my fingers and it reminds me of how awesome this whole pregnancy thing is.

Now that I am pregnant (25 weeks) with baby number 2, the marks are starting to liven up again, but I still don’t mind. As many other women have said, i look at them as my own personal badge of honor and “war wounds” I’ll always have them as a reminder of how amazing the 9 months that only I got to spend with each of my children.

I may never wear a bikini again, but that pales in comparrison to the joy that my family brings me every day.

38 weeks with my son

25 weeks with my current pregnancy:

–Ceece