Hoping to love myself again (Anonymous)

~Age:26
~Number of pregnancies and births: 3 pregnancies (3 c-sections)
~The age of your children, or how far postpartum you are: Children ages 7, 2 and 8.5 months

Some days I look in the mirror and see my reflection somewhat of a positive way. “The stretch marks and skin aren’t that bad after all,” I say to myself, “maybe with just a little more time things will get better.” Then there are the other days…the days when I look at my reflection and feel disgusting. The days that I can’t understand how my husband would ever think that I am beautiful. My husband tells me all the time that I am but I’m not sure that I believe him when he says it. Part of me feels like he is just saying it out of pity, to somehow try to make me feel better. I fear that deep down he really feels like I do about it….disgusted. I hate it when my husband touches my stomach and I am always thinking of how I can position myself so that my stomach doesn’t seem to sag so much. I worry that my husband will find someone else….someone more beautiful….someone less “used”. I know that I shouldn’t feel “used”…I brought three beautiful children into this world and my body let me do that, which is a completely amazing thing but that is how I feel. I feel envious of those who are able to bear children without as much as a mark on them afterwards. I worry because I am not the same person (physically) that my husband fell in love with and I am afraid that he will fall out of love with me. I want to be confident and happy with my body but I’m not. I want to be proud of it and what it has done and not feel that I need to hide behind bulky clothes and shapewear, but I am nowhere near that place. The idea of a tummy tuck is always in my mind. The thought that somehow if my stomach would be flat I would be happy… I could deal with the stretch marks….there is nothing I can do about them anyways. I used to be so confident…thought that I was pretty when I looked at myself in the mirror. Now I don’t feel any of that. I used to like when I got noticed…and now I just try to blend into the background…hoping that no one will catch a glimpse of me. I don’t want to feel this way and I want to be happy with that I have. I don’t want my daughter to grow up and think that she has to fit the world’s ideals of being beautiful and most of all I don’t want her to feel like me. I hope to get there someday…a place where I am at peace with myself and my “mom” body…a place where I don’t have a daily struggle with the mirror…a place where my body is not always on my mind…a place where I am comfortable. Until then I will continue what I am doing…sucking in….shapewear….baggy shirt and fading into the background…

Picture 1 and 2: Me now 8.5 months postpartum with baby number 3.
Picture 3: Me pregnant 38.5 weeks with baby number 3.

My son played a few tricks on me (J.D.)

My story starts in March 2007 when i decided to move to another country and start a new life. I was bored of my life, my job, my city and i felt very lonely and depressed. It was a great choice as i started on a new path with lots of joy and happiness. I managed to get a job a week after moving abroad and i met the father of my son at work. We knew each other, but never talked until one day when he had to supervise my team and he invited me to a pub. We started going out a lot but i thought he only wanted to be friends. That was happening in September 2007. On the October 31 2007 something happened and i missed the last night bus – the stop was in front of his house – so he didn’t let me walk home. I spent the morning in his house eating spaghetti and watching family guy. this is how we started our relationship. In May 2008 we moved in together and in November i told him that i want a family as i am getting old – we were 31 at the time. He always loved children but i didn’t think about having any until i met him. He was very happy to ear that and we started working on it. On January 26 2009 i was at work and didn’t feel very well. I went to the pharmacy with my friend and bought a pregnancy test. Didn’t wait to go home and had it in the toilet at work. I knew i was pregnant, i just needed the confirmation. I sent a text to my bf and he called straight away. He was extremely happy and when i went home that evening he couldn’t stop kissing me and hugging me and making plans. My pregnancy was great. I was a bit nauseous the first weeks but it went away in the second trimester. I walked everyday and tried to be active but i put on lots of weight. I was 117 the summer before getting pregnant, 124 when i got pregnant and 172 when i went to the hospital for the induction. My son was very comfy in my huge belly and he was 12 days overdue. I felt like i couldn’t carry my belly anymore when i went to the hospital on October 12 and they told me that i had to come back on the 14th as there weren’t any free beds…I cried and i went back to the hospital on the 14th. The induction started at 11 but nothing happened. I had contractions but i wouldn’t dilate. It went on like that till the next morning at 9 when i had been given another pill and i started being in agonizing pain. I had to be on a monitor for 1 hour then they moved me to the labour room when i was given an epidural even though i was only 2 cm dilated. After that i was given oxitocin and started to dilate. The epidural would finish after about 2 hours and i would have to wait 20 minutes in horrible pains for the nurse to come give me another dose. I was very lucky to have my bf with me all the time. At 5 pm i felt like i needed to push and called the doctor. I was 9 cm dilated but my son has moved up and he was in distress. The chief of the clinic was called and after he examined me he told me that there is no way i can give birth naturally so i needed an emergency c section if i wanted my son to live. I signed the paper straight away and in 2 minutes i was hurried to the OR. I didn’t even had time to say “love you” to my bf…I was very scared and was shaking, my bf had tears in his eyes…The last thing i remember is having my belly covered in something orange. I woke up a few hours after that in a room with lots of monitors and beeping machines and people going around…I had 2 iv lines in my left arm and 1 line in my right arm. A very nice nurse told me that i need some blood as something happened during the surgery and i lost lots of blood. I was terrified for a second but she told me that my baby was ok and i was going to see him in few minutes. I managed to drink some water and felt so happy that everything was fine. I saw my son that night at 9 and i was the happiest I’ve ever been. On the 19th we went home and started our life as a little family as i like to call us.
I didn’t get stretch marks during pregnancy, but i have this scar to remind me how lucky i was to be living in these days and in a country with great doctors. My son was 8 pounds 7 oz at birth and after birth i found out that it would have been impossible for me to give birth naturally as my son was too big for my pelvis. My only issue is the fat that i still have on my belly, bottom and legs. I am 137 pounds now and would like to go back to the weight i had pre-pregnancy. It’s hard but i hope spring it’s going to help me. If i won’t loose the weight and even put on more – i want to have another child fairly soon – i won’t be very upset because my son is more precious and important than my image.
Believe in you and feel confident. Health and happiness are more important than a flat stomach or flawless skin. Enjoy your babies!

~Your Age: 32
~Number of pregnancies and births: 1 pregnancy, 1 birth
~The age of your children, or how far postpartum you are: Finn is 4 month, 1 week and 3 days old

pics description ;

1. me and my bf summer 2008
2. 28 weeks pregnant
3. 41+5 the day my son was born
4. Finn 2 days old
5. The day we left the hospital – 4 days after birth
6,7,8,9 my belly today 4month, 1 week and 3 days after birth

It Has Taken Time (Anonymous)

This is such a wonderful place for mothers to come! I recently stumbled upon this place while I was searching on facebook for different groups, and I am so so glad I did!

I have honestly always had body issues… I don’t know if it was learned from my mother, or from the society we are living in these days. Looking back I can see how silly I was, how could I have ever comlplained about the youthfull body I had? Crazy as it is I find myself doing the same thing now. It seems it is an everyday battle for me… certain days I defeat the doubt and shame I feel about the stretched out skin, leftover weight and oh of course those stretchmarks. Other days I let the mirror and my lack of self-esteem get the best of me. So ten years from now I wonder if I will be looking back again and thinking how silly I was to complain ( Probably will! haha).

I was married at 21 years old. My husband is an active duty Marine and was deployed twice within the first 3 years of our marriage… We finally got pregnant two months after he returned from his second deployment, I was 24. I had no idea what was in store for me! My mother has always been very slender and I thought I would take after her and only gain about 20 lbs during my pregnancy and bounce right back. Well it started off well… no morning sickness, nothing but the minor aches here and there and a lot of swelling during the end of the pregnancy. I turned 25 during my 7th month. Then ate my way through Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years LOL. My due date came and went. I was finally induced at almost 42 weeks!! The day I was induced they weighed me in at 198 lbs (When I found out I was pregnant I was at 140 lbs). Well, my son and I didn’t do well with Pitocin and so there was an emergency c-section. The week I came home was interesting to say the least. I remember asking my Mom a few times if the flap of skin hanging over my incision would be permanent.. I was so scared! She told me not to worry, but I was still horrified at how I looked.

I have often described myself as an optimistic person, but wasting so much on doubting myself and concentrating on negative things is totally not being an optimistic person. It is a struggle no doubt… but I think I am coming closer and closer to being at peace with my post baby body. It has been 2 years and 2 months since my wonderful perfect amazing son was born and I would have never imagined it would have taken this long to start feeling more like myself and more comfortable with who I am today. I still have an extra 10 lbs of preggo weight… I still have the stretchmarks, although they have continued to very slowly fade. My c-section scar has lightened… and I have gained back some muscle tone after starting a workout plan.

Motherhood has taught me so many things already, and to think of the many years I have ahead :) A big thank you to all the ladies who have posted their stories and shared their feelings.. it really has helped me feel like I am not alone. Here are a few pictures I took yesterday. My stretchmarks are tricky… every single angle they will appear different… sometimes in the right light you can’t see them… sometimes they look pink… sometimes silver or white, they are such funny things. I used to have such intense hatred for them, but I have gotten better at accepting them. When I bend over my “skin apron” appears. I have a wrinkle under my bellybutton, especially when I suck in my tummy. I have an old scar on my hip which blends in pretty well with the larger stretchmarks LOL. With all that said… I have to remind myself that along with those “imperfections” I have been given the most precious gift in the world, my son.

Updated here.

Twin Skin… 4 babies in less than 4years (Jane)

I married a wonderful man and we were excited to start our family relatively quickly. First baby was a healthy, full term girl.
I was quite sure that I had done well to stay in a healthy range, after all, I had always been slim and I believed, based on my genetics that pregnancy would be no different.
My baby came out smaller than average, but perfectly healthy however when I looked in the mirror after the birth I was surprised to find that nothing looked the same. There were stretch marks and a flabby distended stomach that seemed far too large considering the baby that had just exited it.
I chose to cover it all up and think about it at a later date. I had much better things to do, like enjoy being a mother.
I didn’t worry about the weight, and I happily breast fed for 14months. When I stopped the weight had (almost) all dissapeared (somewhere in the 14mths it happened but it was so gradual I couldn’t pin point when).

We tried for number 2 at about this time, hoping to have a 2yr gap between babies. Hah, the best laid plans….
I took a test and it was negative, then after some tears (hormonal, no doubt) and a few more days I took another test. It was positive. I suffered through another severe round of morning sickness and begged for a scan at 13weeks to check on the baby.
When the lady first looked at the screen her face went blank and she turned off all the moniters. Turning to us with a serious face I braced myself for the news ‘there is no baby’… instead she said ‘ Are there twins in the family?’ I am not sure if I will ever forget the feelings that flooded me then, excitement, terror, joy and disbelief. I had no idea I was having twins…. what happened to the two year plan?!
Being a bit of a panicker, I prepared for the inevetible premature births and researched survival rates compulsively but despite all my worrying, I found myself at Full term DEMANDING to be induced!! I no longer could breathe, eat or sleep and I felt my stomach was about to pop at the seams… quite literally it was already starting. The network of stretch marks were like a huge doughnut around my belly button. I looked like I was trying to smuggle a watermellon under my shirt…. one of those big oval ones.

So via C-section I delivered two perfect babies, a boy and girl. I fed them for 4months and then had to swap to formula for sheer exhaustion and sleep deprivation- remembering that I had a toddler too.
Somehow I survived this period, and then when life became a little easier I felt the desire to have another. The twins were 19months when I had our 4th baby (an all natural birth, (VBAC). He was the most wonderfully easy baby and we now feel that we have our complete family, 2boys, 2 girls. They are wonderful, but ever since the birth of the twins my stomach has hung like a balloon that was blown up too big, then left to deflate behind a couch.
I returned to my pre-baby weight a year ago, but the more weight I lose, the more the skin on my stomach looks like an 90yr old mans face.

I do love my body… dressed, I appreciate far more than I did when I was young, but the stomach is too much!
I have posted pics to share with the world, so that others can see that this is what mothers do for their beautiful children!
After all, you would expect a well lived in home to show the footprints of its fellow residents… my tummy shows that 4 little people lived there! (and two of them insisted on using it to practice their kungfu moves on each other).
Hope it helps others!
I have included photos of my tummy from various angles, some are lying on my side, the last is leaning over to show the ‘hang’!(I thought this one might scare some people, so I hesitated in sharing, but hey, this is what the skin does when I bend over! ).

~Number of pregnancies and births: 3 pregnancies, 4 births
~The age of your children, or how far postpartum you are: 5, 3, 3, 1

3 years and 3 months later… (Anonymous)

I had my first son in October 2007 by emergency cesarian and my daughter 17 months later by elective cesairan. I have now given up breastfeeding for one month and although I miss it I am pleased to have my body to myself. I fed each baby for over a year and had been continually pregnant or nursing for 3years and 2 months!!! I am really proud of myself.
My body does not have the youthful shape it did before babies but I like it. I am hoping a little life will go back into my breasts but I am pleased to say my stretch marks with a little tlc have faded to almost nothing. I was lucky to only put on 31lbs with my son and 12lbs with my daughter however I was unlucky in a way as it was due to the nausea and vommiting I get throughout pregnancy.
I feel I have given my children the best possible start in life and I feel proud.

~Age: 28
~Number of pregnancies and births: 2 c-sections, one elective one emergency
~The age of your children, or how far postpartum you are: My children are 2 and 5 months and 12.5 months

Big Tee & Little Tee (Tee)

Age: 26
Pregnancies/births: 1 pregnancy, 1 birth
Age of child: 5

I was 19 when I found out I was pregnant and I was scared to death. I was a junior in college, my boyfriend (now husband) was stationed in another state and neither of us knew anything about babies. We had tons of support from our family and without them I can’t imagine what kind of shape we’d have been in. I was about 115 when I got pregnant and gained 65 pounds during the pregnancy. My mom told me not to worry about it “you’re young-you’ll bounce right back!” After 19 hours of labor, a swift bikini cut and a few stitches, we met our brand new 10 pound baby. Everyone was impressed that itty bitty me birthed such a huge baby, I was just glad it was over. Between trying to finish school during the day, going to work in the afternoon and sometimes going back to school in the evening, going home and spending time with my daughter and studying for the next test (husband by now came home as often as he could but got deployed to Iraq when she was 8 months) weight took a back seat. It was a fleeting thought from time to time but I had an already full plate. By her first birthday (and my college graduation which happened to be on the same day), I had dropped most of the baby weight and my stomach went down but it wasn’t flat. Soon after, I started trying everything-diets, exercise, pure starvation-no matter what I did, I could not lose this pooch. I kept thinking I’d never get into a bikini again. My husband has never been anything less than amazing when it comes to my body and in fact, prefers the softer curvier me. I love everything else about my body so I never let it totally overtake me but the stomach was an issue. I’d still wear bikinis, but I’d just put a shirt over it or something to hide it.

I thought I wasn’t making a big deal of it and then my daughter (then 3) asked me one day why I was wearing a shirt in the pool. I said “it’s what mommy’s do” and she pointed out about 4 or 5 other women at the pool who didn’t have on shirts and said “they’re mommy’s too and they don’t have on shirts”. So I took off my shirt to appease her-she was delighted of course but my insides were screaming and I was mortified. But I felt I had to keep on a brave front because I definitely didn’t want her to pick up on it or worse-develop an unhealthy body image of herself. I’m not sure what I thought was going to happen (the world would come to an abrupt halt maybe? Who knows) but absolutely NOTHING happened. And it was in that moment that I realized I was being ridiculous. Ok, the stomach’s not flat and there are plenty of stretch marks but you know what? I had a freaking 10 lb baby. She’s healthy, happy and the love of my life. I don’t diet, I don’t take pills, I do exercise but only because I sit down at work all day and it breaks up the monotony for me. My husband adores me and we have an absolutely wonderful family. I’m blessed and couldn’t ask for much more. And when I’m at the beach or pool-I’m in my bikini, running around playing with my happy and healthy daughter-jelly belly and all. It won’t consume you if you don’t let it.

I’m attaching pics

Pre-pregnancy (blurry but you get the idea), day of delivery, today and Big Tee & Little Tee

Uneven Breasts (Proud Mom)

My baby boy is 7 months tomorrow, and I’m a 23 year old all proud battle scared mom… I’ve been 1 of the lucky ladies to not develop strech marks, but a single one right on top of my belly button, the problem I’ve had is that at least 4 months ago my baby won’t feed from the left breast for longer than 2 minutes, he just likes the right one, causing the uneven growth of the breasts, as you can see on the pics…. I will like to know if anybody else has had the same problem and if anybody has a solution for that, or else if they will get better after I finish breast feeding, I plan to do so until at least 1 year…
I will post as well some more pics on my c section scar

~Age: 23
~Number of pregnancies and births: 1 pregancy & birth
~The age of your children, or how far postpartum you are: 7 months boy

A Map Where He Lived (Kace)

Kace, age 31
3 children, aged 7 and 5

The irony of my being able to find beauty in the natural shape of a mom’s form postpartum is not lost on me. I served a year in the military and was sexually assaulted. As a byproduct of the sexual assaults I rejected the female form. I wanted to hide and disappear into nothing, which first took the form of excessive exercise, moving on to anorexia and finally bulimia. Clawing my way out of this torture and mutilation to self took 5 years; I did so with the help of a great support system. I was dating my husband during the tail end of a very hard cycle. My husband has always been my greatest advocate and approving audience. He has found me beautiful at every stage, and encouraged me to also see beauty in me.

My husband and I fought for some time to be able to hold on to a pregnancy. The conceiving was never hard, it was the holding on to it that seemed impossible. When I had an operation to remove endometriosis, we were finally able to hold on and follow through with a birth. And boy howdy did we conceive after that first operation! Twins, a boy and girl. The pregnancy was not without its complications though, and at 6 months we were warned of Robbie’s Ebstein’s anomaly, a genetic defect of the heart, and the high likelihood of his death. We took the moments we had and held tight and we dreamed big. To do otherwise was counter intuitive to the gift of just having him in that moment.

To this day I have moments where I don’t know how to answer the question, “how many children do you have?”. In my heart, always, I have 3 children. I held 3 children in my arms, the twins on the day of their birth, and my youngest son on the day of his birth. Though I can only hold 2 of my children every day, Robbie is as much apart of my day as his brother and sister. If I answer 3 to someone who doesn’t know my story though, they look over my shoulder and I see them counting and doing a double take. There’s the follow up explanation, and the uncomfortable silence, as the person flounders for the proper thing to say after such an admission. Generally, it’s an “I’m sorry for your loss”, which is a perfectly acceptable thing to say…How, though, do I explain, in the moments of uncomfortable silence following the explanation, and the offer of condolence, that my answer of 3 is only for me. It’s not for them, for the condolences or the pity. It’s that to not include Robbie, especially in the years close to his death, is and was, like feeling his death over and over. Or more, blotting out the precious moments I held him, watched my husband hold him. More often than not these days, I say I have 2 children to those just meeting me. There is always this moment that happens inside of myself though, a thought for my first born son, when I tell myself, I have 3.

The loss of Robbie will always be a wound, a hole in my life that can never be healed, but the degree of pain has lessened…it’s not a pulsing beat that steals my breath most days, every minute. I found laughter again. I found peace, and comfort. My children are my absolute reason. That’s a complete sentence. My Reason. The days are more, the moments in time are bigger, better, because I have them, whether with me here, or above.

Robbie taught me so much in the months that I held him in me. I learned of my children in such an intimate way in the 8 months I carried them. Lexa rode very low in my pelvic area, and Robbie’s place was always at the left side, as near the top as he could get. Most of the time I had the weirdest pregnancy belly I had ever seen, the bottom taut, full of spirited little girl, and the top full of a baby boy who held on with everything he had. The center of my belly, the place where most women are the tightest, was mushy on occasion, this area of “unfilledness”. I was hooked and mesmerized. Of course they would sometimes change positions, usually during the sonogram, with Lexa being the camera hog, and Robbie just quietly being. For the most part, they held their places, bottom and top. In truth, there were moments where I was horrified to watch the changing in my body take place. The stretch marks starting way lower than I found normal, and rising up to the top, just below my breasts. There was virtually no area of my body left unscathed by carrying my babies… my breasts, thighs, hips.

There were moments I held on to. Small blessings we treasure to this day during a pregnancy that could have turned into 32 ½ weeks of mourning, of silent vigil. Because of Robbie’s diagnosis, we got to see the babies on an ultrasound once a week, an event we often anticipated. It was joy for the moments we got to see his heartbeats. See him move. We talked of the future, of what we would do when we became a family of 4. We knew the odds, and were always aware on some level of the reality. We chose though, to live with hope. I’ll always be grateful that we did.

Robbie passed away in utero. A forced birth was necessary for the health and well being of Lexa. To prepare me, my gynecologist explained what I could expect. When I was told that vaginal delivery could possibly damage Robbie, mar him, my only thought was “I can’t do that to him”. I couldn’t’t face the idea of what that kind of delivery could do to him. I requested a c-section. I felt I had to give Robbie this dignity, a gentler way of coming into this world. On the day that I was released from the hospital, we buried Robbie. The weeks following saw us coming and going from the hospital NICU, waiting for the day we could bring home our Lexa.

People mean well, I always kept that in mind. Often times though, the kindest overture feels like a knife being twisted. The phrase “at least you have one baby to hold” could make me cry in the moments no one was watching. I wanted to scream. I remember particularly a pamphlet the hospital sent home, Empty Arms. I wondered at why people couldn’t see how empty my arms were, even filled with a blessing like my girl…There was supposed to be a second child in my arms too. Twins. It was a word that would leave me reeling. To this day, when my kids jokingly tell each other when they match or say the same things, “we’re twins”, my heart can skip, for just a moment. I wanted to see the twin bond that I hear so much about, that my grandma shared with her twin Jack. I wanted to hear their special language, watch the friendship that no other could match. I wanted two birthday cakes on the same day in May, celebrating the same milestones.

My parents often visit Robbie’s grave. My mom, a blessing, has decorated his grave for every holiday and birthday. Windmills mean so much more, as I see her buy them for my son, knowing they circle in the wind for him. I don’t visit. I can’t think of him there. If I go, I only remember his death, the day they covered his tiny casket. I can’t do that to myself, allow myself to feel that pain to the point where the joy disappears. I want to remember his heartbeats on the monitor, and the times I saw him moving. The personality I felt from him, my little lion, who held on as long as possible.

Jason and I spoke rarely of Robbie after his passing. We mourned together, and cried, hung on. It was months later when I wasn’t so focused on my own grief, that I realized how tightly Jason held on to his grief, not letting it all out, so that he could give me his strength. I ache when I think about how he suffered quietly, to make sure I got through okay.

After a year we began talking of having one more child, even though we feared the loss. Again, we experienced the miscarriages and again, I had to have the surgery that removes endometriosis.

Two years after the twins, along came Nathan. I never lost the baby weight from the twins. On top of that, I gained as much weight with my little man that I had with the twins. I was forced into another c-section, as my gyno would not perform a v-bag. My body was ravaged.

When my husbands hands would travel over my stomach, over the loose skin, and stretch marks, particularly the pregnancy pooch that dragged my stomach to the “down there” level, I would flinch. I couldn’t handle him touching the ugliness. I would cover every inch I could, turn my back when I changed. He often told me he found my body gorgeous. He saw my stomach, in all its gory detail, gorgeous, because it was where our children came from. Jason would cajole, and force his hand to stay on my stomach, willing me to be comfortable with it, to see it as he saw it…and I couldn’t.

Another miscarriage. It became clear that I would have to have surgery for endometriosis every couple of years to eliminate pain. Jason and I discussed our options. In the end we decided it was best to have a hysterectomy. One more surgery that cut stomach muscles.

I no longer had feeling in stomach. It wasn’t until Nathan was maybe a year old that I noticed this monster lump under the skin. I knew immediately it was a hernia. Stealing myself against the doubt and worry from another surgery, I had it repaired. It failed 3 months later, most likely, as a couple surgeons told me, helped along by the flap of skin hanging down. I was told once you get a hernia, there is a 50% chance it can come back. It took almost another 3 years before I would carry through with another repair, combining it with a tummy tuck to give me that 10% increase in odds, a magical number of 40% chance of the hernia coming back. I was a bit excited at the idea of getting rid of all this excess. I looked forward to the physical change that this would entail. I had an immeasurable amount of shame associated with this part of my body. Not to mention I now had medical implications tied to it. Day to day living with my kids had changed. The pain was intense, often times I would have to slip away quietly so the kids didn’t see, to take care of the hernia, forcing it back into it’s rightful place.

The feelings that arose on the morning that we drove to the hospital for the surgery in the first week of March (12 days now) were ones I wasn’t expecting, or prepared for. Outside of the fear of death, which I teased about (but seriously, I feared) for a year prior, I was afraid of losing this trace of my son. It was the last physical sign of Robbie. I gripped my husband’s hand “what if they take it all, I don’t want them to take away everything”? I couldn’t bear the thought that this last vestige of Robert Hunter being carved from me. I had to do this though. I had to go through with the surgery for my kids, forget the fear of dying, and forget my last minute resistance to lose the flesh that had for years repulsed me. As a mom, I had to be physically able to keep up with them, the pain of the hernia making it impossible to do so.

Waking from anesthesia, I raised my gown with trepidation, worried over what I would find. I had joy I cannot adequately explain. Beneath my bandages, I could already see flatness to my belly I hadn’t seen since embarking on the parenting trail. Above the bandages, from belly button to breasts, in crazy patterns only myself and my husband can interpret, were stretch marks. This was the place where Robbie lived. This to me was the most beautiful thing. I had the best of both worlds. A chance to be well from a medical standpoint, and physically able to keep up with my kids. I also had an incredible bonus, the map that my son left behind for me. The surgery changed one part of me. My body as a whole though, still bears the mark of having children. I have lumps and bumps, things have shifted and somehow gravity overcame. I see now, though, what my husband tried so hard to convince me of when he held his hand to my stomach. Not because of what the doctors could change, and what was taken, but because of what was left behind.

Just gotta keep plugging away at it (Tara)

Age 29
Pregnancies 3
Births 1 Cesarean
5 months PP

This is a great site, I have really enjoyed reading everyone’s stories and seeing pictures of other women PP and their beautiful babies. I have a 5 month old son, he was born by cesarean. I am still trying to get used to the scar, it is red and ugly but thankfully it is low enough that nobody but me and my husband will see it. I am about 10 pounds away from my prepregnancy weight. I am finding that every pound has been a struggle to get rid of. I am breast feeding and it has still been hard. To those women who say the weight just melted right off of them from breastfeeding I am jealous because I have had to diet and exercise hard to lose every single pound so far. I don’t mean to complain, I am grateful that I have my son and that I was able to have a successful pregnancy. I am hoping to have another child in the next year or so all going well.

The following pictures are of me at 37 weeks pregnant, me 5 months PP and my son at 4 1/2 months.