Hate the way I look (Anonymous)

I have gave birth to 4 kids after my frist one I looked better then I did before I got pregent!! But in the end my 4th child is the one who did a number on my body we lost him to a birth defect called holoprosencephaly Now I can’t stand the way my body looks I have try every thing to lose my belly but nothing has worked What really rips my heart out is when some one comes up to me & ask’s if im pregnet again cause I can’t have no more babies.so heres pics of me now 2 yrs after my 4th baby!!




Nita

Hi I’m Nita, a mother of one and hopefully another on the way. I had my son two months after I turned eighteen. He’s now fourteen months old and my husband and I are trying to have our second. I stumbled upon the site tonight and I wanted to say thank you because it has helped me with my mama body. I was 130lbs when we got pregnant and for the first six months I had morning sickness so I lost weight but then I gained 15lbs in a month. Needless to say I now have stretch marks but I love them. I’m looking forward to posting my pregnant tummy pictures when we conceive. I don’t have any photos of my first pregnancy but here’s one of me and Aiden.



young mother of two! (Anonymous)

hello! I am a 21 year old mother of two beautiful girls! I had a c-section with both of them. This is my stomach after a month of just giving birth! I still feel fat! But my Husband makes me feel so much better when he tells me that he doesn’t care about the stretch marks or that I gained weight. Those things happen when you have a baby! I working on losing the weight. I still have a few more weeks till I’m able to work out again! I still feel beautiful no matter what my body may look like!



puttin’ on the big girl panties (Anonymous)

While having yet another conversation with my preschooler daughter that Pull-Ups were not “cooler” than real undies, she sassed me. Her reply? “You’re just jealous because you’ve had 2 babies and are too fat to wear them.” Never one to back down from a challenge, I showed her! So here I am, a birthmother of two, ages 4 and 2, wearing size 3T-4T Pull-Ups. Yeah, they were snug, but no more so than the “date panties” I used to wear before I was married. You can see in the picture of my front that even though I may be as petite as I was pre-babies, I still carry birth memorabilia around my middle. My middle really does stand out in contrast to the rest of my fit body. One day in the pool locker room I was dressing my younger daughter and myself when I made the comment “Let’s go get sister.” A woman nearby said, “Oh, you have twins? My sister has twins too and she still has the ‘twin skin,'” while gesturing toward my middle. I’m afraid my peals of laughter were a bit uncouth for a response. I told her, “I do have two kids, but they’re two years apart.” She was mortified and I had to wonder why. Why is belly skin okay if you have twins but not a singleton? I have not always had such a loving relationship with my post-pregnancies body. One day a few months after the birth of my second, I looked in the mirror and bemoaned the fact that I still had a huge sagging belly and probably always would. My then-2yo said, “But Mom, that’s where you carry your babies. It’s the most important part of you.” Never have I been more proud of my daughter or myself. (Of course then she added, “And since there’s no baby in it now, could we put some toys in it?”) I’m now newly pregnant with my third child and looking forward to all the changes my body will go through. I know it will be a different body in a year, but I will also be a different woman and mother. A stronger and gentler person, with the body to show for it.




27 yr old mom, 2 kids 18 months apart, 3 years PP (Anonymous)

My first pregnancy, at 21, ended in an early miscarriage. I got pregnant with my first son a few months later. I started out around 135lbs and gained 35lbs with that pregnancy. My hips, bum, and thighs took a beating. With that pregnancy, my stomach had no stretch marks, but my thighs were a mess!!! I hadn’t lost the baby weight before getting pregnant with my second when my first was 10 months old. I was incredibly sick throughout my second pregnancy, vomitting from day one until the day I delivered. I only gained 24lbs with the second pregnancy. My thighs didn’t get any worse but I did end up with some new stretch marks on my stomach. My first son was born at 41 weeks weighing 8lbs 6ozs. My second was a big baby! He was 8lbs 12ozs, but more than 3 weeks early! My boys are 18 months and a few days apart. I sufferred from PPD after my first, and even worse with my second. The anti-depressants I was on caused me to gain a lot of weight, and in May 2006, I weighed more than I had at the end of either pregnancy. I’ve spent the last year trying to lose weight. I’ve lost 35lbs so far, but am still about 20lbs pregnancy weight. My youngest is 3 years old. I am a lot lighter now than I was when I got pregnant with him, but not as light as I was when I got pregnant with my first :). My stomach looks pretty good, and I have no problem in a bikini. But I have a hard time dealing with my saggy stretch-mark scarred thighs. Inner and outer thighs are really bad (as shown in picture). I’ve had a really hard time with my body image since having children. I look back at pictures of me on my honeymoon, in a bikini, and I remember how “fat” I thought I looked… at under 120lbs. I’ve had a hard time adjusting to my post-baby body. I’m not sure I ever will be able to completely accept it… but this site has really helped me feel better knowing I’m not alone :)






Having a big baby (Anonymous)

Having my son has brought me great Joy. Especially after 2 little girls. The way he changed me is for the better. I love my body more now that i have had him. I gained so much weight with him At 39weeks 4 days along I looked as though there was no way i could stretch any further. I had my son 3 days early and he was 9.6lbs and 21.5 inches long.




First time pregnancy- Mother of Twins (Anna)

I was told that I may never have children. But regardless of what my doctors have said I felt different. I didn’t feel like I was myself, something had changed…“Pregnant” appeared on the little window. I felt instantly sick… that sickness lasted seven and a half months. I was diagnosed with hyper-emesis and was in the ER nearly every week, sometimes twice a week for IV fluids and compazine. The only woman I knew that had a terrible pregnancy was my mother and she died on Halloween 2004. She wasn’t there to help me get through it. The pregnancy was so awful I wanted to abort. On February 9, 2006 I found out I was having twins! Originally I had hoped for a boy and a girl (so I would never have to be pregnant again) however, I was delightfully blessed with twin boys. They were born via c-section, three weeks early on June 23, 2006. Baby A (Aidan James) weighed five pounds five ounces. Baby B (Nathaniel Lewis) weighed four pounds eight ounces. I did not get to see them after they were born- they were whisked away to be cleaned. Nathaniel was taken straight to the NICU. When I got back to my room I got to meet and hold Aidan. About ten minutes later he was also taken to the NICU because his respiratory rate was too fast. The doctor walked in and said that I had lost too much blood and that I was not allowed to get out of bed. I don’t recall much more after that as the pain medications were fantastic but I cried… and cried. I did not get to meet my little Nathaniel until the following evening. Over 24 hours later I was finally taken to see him and instantly fell in love. I was told that my boys would be in the NICU for “just a few days” which apparently really means two weeks for Nathaniel and three for Aidan! I did breast feed them both for the first month, but the stresses of the c-section, not being allowed to get out of bed and see my baby, the long days spent at the hospital visiting MY babies, going home empty handed every day made me extremely depressed. I couldn’t keep up with my milk production and became increasingly irritated by having to pump instead of bonding with my boys. Both babies were finally home on July 15, 2006. Although I haven’t been a mom for that long (time wise) I feel as though this is all I’ve done all my life. Being a mother is so incredibly natural for me that I don’t feel that having my boys has changed much of anything for me. I feel like they have always been with me. Below are some pictures… • The night before my C-section • A close up of my belly and the very painful stretch marks • My boys (the first time we were all together as a family) • My body now- after all the changes- weight gain of 40lbs AFTER the babies were born (11 months post-partum) • My beautiful boys now! I, by no means have anything that resembles a perfect body. I have been heavy since I was a child, and I am now at my heaviest. I view my stretch marks as the rhythm strip of life; proof of being a real woman; proof that my body did exactly what it was supposed to do. Don’t get me wrong, I still have days where I hate my body and wish I were just at my pre-pregnancy weight- but I would not, could not, trade this experience for anything. The hardest part for me in all this, was that my mother never got to see me get married (three months before I got pregnant), and never got to meet my boys. She would have loved them greatly.










my baby body (Anonymous)

I have had two children. Through both pregnancies I could not hardly eat, thus leaving me with little to no weight gain. My first pregnancy was six years ago and i developed alot of stretch marks on my stomach. I already had them on my breasts. With my second one (he is three months now) I didnt get any additional stretch marks. I gained a total of two lbs with my first son (calculated from first ob visit, to birth) and my second I lost three. My second pregnancy I developed a kidney stone in my sixth month. They placed a stent in, that could not be removed until after I delivered. Five days after delivery I went to have surgery to crush the stone and remove the stent. I had been on antibiotics my entire pregnancy because of recurrent urinary infections, thus leaving me waaayy more infected than the Dr.’s thought going into surgery. They crushed the initial problem stone, but could not remove the stent because my body had produced stones on the stent(because it had been in for too long), making it difficult to get the stent out at this facility. To make matters worse, when I awoke in recovery, I knew something was not right, as I had been through this many times…. I developed sepsis, infection had spread through my blood. I went into shock, my bp dropped to 30/12….. I should be dead… After a week and a half in the hospital, I was well enough to come home.. I could not walk more than a few steps because of being out in the hospital for so long… When I came home I still had the stent in and I also had a nephrostomy tube in my back ( a pee bag from my kidney)… I lost 30 lbs in a month and I finally got the stent out. I am trying to live life to the fullest, because I see now that it could be gone in an instant.










More than a Physical Change (Anonymous)

As a teen, I always struggled with my weight. My heaviest in high school was around 155 pounds, which is a lot sitting in my 5’0″ frame. I finally was able to shed the weight just after getting married, when I was 18. I never stepped on a scale, but I was able to fit a size three and had never been happier with my body. Just a few months later, I was pregnant with my first child. I began gaining weight right away, no problems. I was in denial about the pregnancy for the first few months. I didn’t take great care of my body and I ate anything and everything I could get my hands on. But I still hadn’t gained any stretchmarks. I remember looking through pregnancy photos online with a friend and being horrified. The photos were the same as what I’m seeing here and what I see in the mirror everyday now. I ignorantly thought at the time, that the stretchmarks were somehow the mother’s fault for not taking care of her body. That if you took care of yourself and rubbed magical cream on yourself everyday that you’d be able to return to your pre-baby belly and anything less what pure neglect. How naive and judgemental I was! I was around 34 weeks when I got my very first stretchmark. Just the one stretchmark sent me into a 2-hour long crying fit. I was distraught and the reality began setting in that my body was going to be changed forever and there was nothing I could do about it. After week 38, I’d gained over 60 pounds and my one stretchmark grew and turned into hundreds. I was ashamed and quickly edited them out of every picture I showed my family and friends. On July 5th, over a week past my EDD, I gave birth naturally (no epidural, woohoo!) to a healthy, beautiful baby girl and my life hasn’t been the same since. But that goes without saying, right? lol. My daughter is about a month and a half away from celebrating her first birthday now. We’re still nursing, with no end in sight. I’m sure my already sagging breasts, will continue to do so and I’m prepared to accept it. I have my good days and I have my bad days. I appreciate all that my body has gone through to grow and nourish my little girl, but I long for my sexy, pre-pregnancy body so much it hurts some days. To all the mothers before me– I apologize for being so cruel in my judgements and I can’t believe it took becoming a mother myself to appreciate all your loving sacrifice. You’re all beautiful!