Submissions

Dear Shape of a Mother,

I wanted to add my photos. I had a 30 inch waist and it grew to 47 inches with my first child. I had no idea how extremely painful stretchmarks are and I feel sorry for anyone to endure the pain of them along with normal pregnancy pain.

But then the baby comes and it?s all worth it. I am a mother. I do not need to go around looking trampy in small clothes, giving the message to other women and a future daughter of mine that women are only attractive in the tightest clothes on the smallest bodies.

I am woman, I am mother, hear me roar!

20 weeks pg:

38 weeks (had baby the next day)

6 days post partem:

13 days post partem:

15 MONTHS post partem:

Sincerely,
Elizabeth
Age 30

Blessings to you mama!! Thank you for doing this project!

I’ve had 4 children… 2 waterbirths, a forced c-section for breech presentation, and a beautiful unassisted home birth last December. I’ve never ever had a positive body image, but have always felt beautiful and vibrant while carrying my children. I hope that one day our society respects and honors the WHOLE female, not just the maiden one. These pictures show my last pregnancy, after the cesarean. That is honestly the marking that bothers me the most. :(

32 weeks pregnant

our first nursing out of the birth pool

14 hours postpartum, and loving it!

Many Blessings,
Angelina

For having five full term pregnancies, I have surprisingly few belly photos. Here are a couple

And here I am last week with #4.

Baby#1 12/98
miscarriage 4/99
Baby#2 2/00
miscarriage 7/00
Baby#3 8/01
miscarriage 1/02
Baby#4 10/02
Baby#5 11/03

I’m Eden. These photos hardly tell my story, but here they are.

6 weeks pregnant with my first, suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum. (Please include the link to the hyperemesis site. It could help a lot of pregnant women reading your site.)

I actually lost weight in my first trimester from the amount of vomiting I did. But I went on to have a healthy pregnancy when my condition finally ceased at 17 weeks.

Here I am at 36 weeks.

One of the stretchmarkless ones. I do have faint ones on my breasts and hips. I’m so white you can barely see them though, kind of faint and silvery. I gained 36 LB during this pregnancy and it took about a year to get back to “normal”. I accepted those last 5-10lb as my own. I received a lot more flattering attention with that weight ON, strangely. I guess the womanly form is appreciated in the real world, if not in magazines.

I had another child 2 years and 2 months later. My 2nd pregnancy also included weight loss from obscene amounts of vomiting, job loss and the inability to even care for myself. I also was diagnosed with hyper-thyroid. Great, right? Lose weight while doing nothing? Not so… It never went away, and even after I gave birth it persisted. It was nice to be back to my pre-pregnancy size within 2 weeks of not trying to lose weight. However, I was losing my hair and sanity with the weight. A goiter was forming in my neck and it would get ignored for months until it was a little too big for me to pretend it wasn’t there anymore.

I finally got treatment that would kill the goiter and render my thyroid completely useless. I will be on medicine for it for the rest of my life. I will always have normal levels of hormones on paper, but will never feel normal again. I will always struggle to control my weight. Sometimes I still having a hard time not comparing myself as I am now, to the girl I was before or even in between my children.

I firmly believe it was the hyperemisis that created the conditions that would foster my thyroid problems. Other women have also reported similar stories to mine. Whether or not you suffered from hyperemisis too, please have your thyroid levels checked. It’s as simple as asking your doctor. And it’s incredibly important directly to your mothering, as it affects your ability to bear children in the future, your mood and mental wellbeing.

Here I am 8 years post-partum from my 1st, 6 years post-partum my 2nd.

My sons are worth it. I may never be who I was before, but as I get older I genuinely feel that’s not such a bad thing afterall. Thanks for reading!

This was my favorite picture taken. I was in my second trimester with my son and it was wonderful. After dealing with infertility for so long it and never believing I would get pregnant this was a miracle. I will follow-up with post partum shots as to this day – 17 months later I STILL look pregnant sadly, but thank goodness I am not alone. My body is just like all the rest of the amazing mothers out there. I am so tired of seeing celebs who have children and 6 weeks later there is no record physically of this. I dare someone in the public eye to post a REAL photo of their bodies after childbirth because while there are some blessed with incredible genes most of us have our battle scars of stretch marks, sagging skin (who said we were going to have a shelf after a c-section) and so many other changes that remain forever after that life changing day.

Thank you, THANK YOU for creating this incredible site. I have sent it to all the moms I know.

This is me when I was about 8 months pregnate with my son. He has a big sister who is four that did most of this damage. I only gained 10 lbs with her and 14 with him. I noticed that I really didnt gain any strech marks with him. The ones that I got from my daughter just extended higher and got a little wider.

I love looking at other bellies. It helps to know that there are others who dont have perfect tummys.

This is my stomach after carrying a 9 lb. 5 oz. baby girl (I gained 55 pounds) and a 9 lb. 9 oz. baby boy (I only gained 10 lbs. because I had all day sickness that lasted 9 months) . It is saggy and stretched out.

Thank you mamas for being so willing to share!!! Your frankness and honesty is helping me come to turns with my changed body. I was 22 when I got pregnant for the first time. Six months after getting married. Never really thought my body was much to look at but it seemed like I was just beginning to come to terms with it and like myself. I really think that one of the main reasons I had such bad ppd after my first was because the way my body changed shocked me. Stretch marks began to appear on my breasts in the second trimester. And the kept getting bigger and bigger and of course sagging lower and lower. Not only that but my beautiful naturally curly hair started growing out straight in my third trimester. By the time by baby was 5 months old I had 4 inches of straight roots and about 10 inches of curly ends. I gained just short of 80 pounds and the stretch marks that started as little red marks under my belly slowly grew to angry red streaks up my belly around my hips, down my buttcrack, on my inner thighs and calves. This is how it started (1st pg, 37 wks):

compared with what it looked like at 35 wks, second pg:

The weight mostly came off and I got down to a size 6 before getting pregnant again a year later. But the skin never shrank back. I can’t tell you how many times I got my belly zipped up into my jeans (so I started wearing buttonfly). It really hurt when some of my girlfriends would try to say that I didn’t take care of my skin properly during pregnancy or that if I had tighter abs pre pregnancy that my stomach never would have had to stretch that far. Or when my husbands friends would joke around that I “really let myself go” after getting married. Between my boob flaps, my belly pudge and my hair that just wouldn’t do ANYTHING I was a completely different person on the outside and I felt like I had stepped into a new body. It wasn’t so much about looks as it was about how I felt… akward and ashamed.
My tummy was never “flat” and I never had washboard abs pre getting this mama body but I felt pretty and sexy.

Here’s what I look like 1 day postpartum.

I look at this picture and to this day just feel akward. It’s beautiful and awesome what our bodies do and even what they look like but for some reason I still can’t get over how akward I feel until I lose most of the weight I gained during pregnancy. Here’s what my belly looks like now, 8 months post second pregnancy. I just realized that these pictures I took are the only ones of my belly, in all it’s glory…

Somehow it’s immensely freeing to share these photos. It’s somehow making it okay for me to look how I do.
~Thanks for reading~

As soon as I saw the first few postings on this website I cried! I’ve felt like I was the only one with a floppy striped gut. It really made me feel like I wasn’t alone trying to hid my flabby skin. Thank you. And because of this site I’d like to share my images in order to help other women not feel like their the only ones whose postpartum bodies changed after the birth of their children.
I had hoped that I wouldn’t get stretch marks from pregnancy since both of my sisters didn’t get any, but around 32 weeks of pregnancy they started to slowly appear. First as little dots on my skin that itched and soon there were many lines running up and down my lower abdomen. I felt pretty insecure about them and would often ask (half jokingly) my husband if he could still love me with stretch marks. He said “Honey I married you with stretch marks! I’ll always love you.” Later after I delivering our daughter he saw my saggy skin and the bright red stretch marks he said. “I like your tiger strips”. Even though I have an incredibly supportive husband I still get those creeping feelings of insecurity that remain in the shadows of my thoughts about myself…

8weeks pregnant

32 weeks pregnant and still growing

37 weeks pregnant and up almost 40lbs above my prepregnancy weight

4.5 months postpartum & 15lbs from prepregnancy weight

This is about what I looked like before I got pregnant. I gained 100 pounds during my pregnancy.

This is me labouring.

Touching my son’s head while waiting for the next contraction so I can officially meet him.

Meeting my son for the first time. The huge stretch marks, the saggy breasts…all worth it.

My son’s first meal. Beautiful.

I have about 60 more pounds to lose (currently 7 months post partum) and I don’t have any recent pictures that show my body but when I do they will be posted.

This blog makes me feel so much better. It makes me happy to share my birth photos with women who will see the beauty, and not the “flaws.”