Tummy Struggles (Anonymous)

~Age: 27 years old
~Number of pregnancies and births: Two
~The age of your children, or how far postpartum you are: 3 and 2 years old, both born by c-section.

Every day I look in the mirror and feel a wee bit sad, I have a miss-shaped belly button, scaring in my belly button from any endometriosis surgeries.

My body tells a story. with all the paths leading different ways, spiralling all over my body.

Whilst I am grateful for my two beautiful children I feel sad about what it has done to my body, in fact so much I am putting off having another until my stomach is toned more.

I am not sure how toned I could make it though, there’s only so much going back right?

When I see other women’s bodies like my own I feel okay, but my own, I’m not so okay about.

I just wanted to share to show that no all bodies are made perfect, to those women out there struggling with it like I am!

Accepting Change (Anonymous)

Age: 26
Number of pregnancies 3, Number of births: 2
Kids ages: 10 and 4 months
4 months postpartum

I was 16 when I had my daughter. Before I had gotten pregnant I was 116 lbs. Quickly after I gave birth, I returned to 116 lbs. I got a few stretch marks and dealt with it. It took years for me to be comfortable in my skin but I was glad that I was able to overcome it. Fast forward 10 year later, I gave birth to my son during my 39th week (my weight peaked at 154 lbs). It was a quick, but grueling labor. My son was born weighing 6 lbs 15 oz (my daughter was 6 lbs 6 oz) so he was kind of small. I remember the day I came home from the
hospital and I had a friend come by to see the baby. First thing she said when I opened the door for her was “You sure you don’t have another one still in there?”

As a new mom I wanted to cry, but I sucked it up. After she left I came to the realization that this weight loss progress isn’t going to be easy. Before I had my son I was 5’2 in height and about 124 lbs. Now at 4 months postpartum I am 130 lbs. I know some people might not think that it isn’t that much, but it
is still a change. Lose skin, stretch marks, uneven breast is what I am dealing with now. For the past few weeks exercise has been my best friend. At times I feel like giving up, maybe cause I am not getting the results as fast as I would like them. I have also started to count calories. That takes a lot of self
control because I still have the appetite of a pregnant woman….I WANT TO EAT EVERYTHING =)

I feel very fortunate that I have a wonderful man in my life. Sometimes I feel ashamed to be naked in front of him. Surprisingly, he doesn’t mind my flaws. He’s always touching and rubbing my stomach. I think as women we are self conscious about our appearance, and I blame the media for that. Beauty comes in
all different shapes & sizes though…..we are all beautiful because we were created by God!

I stumbled across this website through a google search, but I am so glad I found it. I appreciate each and every one of your stories. As moms, we go through many sacrifices but each one of them are worth it. I feel privileged and honored that God chose me to carry HIS kids.

First pic- A month before I got pregnant with my son
Second pic- Me and my daughter, dressed for my baby shower, I was 7 ½ months
pregnant with my son
Third pic- Last picture I took while pregnant with my son
Fourth/fifth pics- 3 weeks post partum
Sixth/seventh/eighth pics- 4 months post partum (The eighth one my stretch marks
are really visible)
Ninth pic- my babies =)

My Story (Anonymous)

I have always been worried about the day I would find out I was pregnant. Not because I didn’t want a baby or a joy in my life but I had always felt insecure about my weight. I come from a family where weight was a big issue and both me and my brother were little fat kids growing up. In high school, I changed that and lost 80 pounds and felt wonderful. I met my husband and we dated. Throughout our relationship, he had never had to worry about weight but I did and I failed. I ballooned back up from stress, a sit down job, and falling back into habits. I am 6’0 tall and I was down to 209 (which was skinny for me) and now pregnant at 260 pounds. We got married 7 months ago and I am now 4 months pregnant. I am so glad that the “nightmares” I had about pregnancy and weight gain are steady for now. Knowing my mom had gained 70 pounds in a pregnancy scared me. I have actually taken this opportunity to get healthier with foods and not being able to eat a whole lot now has allowed me to loose 13 pounds (of course not by choice). I am to the point where I am getting depressed about my body even more since my belly is pulling forward more and that has always been an insecurity anyways. My clothes are limited now and it is hard to be a plus sized pregnant woman. As if I didn’t already have a hard time shopping for clothes, now it’s even more selected in what I can buy. My husband is one who keeps me going because he has never judged me or made fun of me and especially now, emotionally, any little thing can make or brake me. I would love to share photos but I can only tell I have a “baby bump” when I am laying down so maybe in my further months I would love to share. I am trying to make the best of this and give myself the opportunity to prep myself and my family for a better and healthier life style. It may sound odd, but I think I have gained a motivation to do better with my health now that I am pregnant and I would love to finish my weight loss goal and this time, FINISH. I am hoping my little baby will be my inspiration.

Disgusting Stomach, But I Was Blessed with a Beautiful Daughter (Jen)

I’m 27, 1 Pregnancy (so far) and 1 Birth, Daughter will be 3 in May

I am working on being happy with my body. It was extremely hard for me at first. Pre-pregnancy I was a bikini model and I never had to work on my stomach very hard and I could eat what I wanted. The last two weeks of my pregnancy I got stretch marks. After giving birth to my daughter, I was left with a very saggy, stretch mark covered stomach. For months, I covered up my stomach from my husband. I had gone from a bikini model body to a disgusting blob of fat that I called my stomach. I gained 45 lbs during my pregnancy but lucky enough I was able to lose all but 10 lbs pretty quick. However, the disgusting stretch marks never went away. They have lightened up some but I still can’t stand for my husband to see my stomach. He loves me no matter what and we are blessed with a beautiful daughter that made it all worth it. I’ve changed my swimsuit style and my clothing style a little but overall, I’ve learned to be happy with myself. We are working on baby #2 so I’m sure my struggles will start all over after the birth of our next one. All worth it though!

First picture is from about 2 1/2 yrs after my daughter’s birth and the second picture was about a month ago, almost 3 yrs after her birth.

8 Months PP (Renee)

Previous post here.
Age 24
~1 baby boy, 8 months old
Pre pregnancy 135lbs, @ Pregnancy 192lbs, After birth 162lbs, 8months PP 150-154lbs.

I want to start off by saying thank you to everyone for all there comments and support. It has been about 5 months since I have posted last. I still am not the happiest person and i am still not satisfied with my body. I am however thankful for my healthy baby boy and the fact that things could be a lot worse. Well since I posted last I did go to the gym for a month and lost close to 12lbs but for some reason no more weight will fall off. It does make me mad and frustrated that I cant loose anymore weight. I have kinda gotten use to my squeeshy belly but it makes me sad to see it when i bend over or sit down. I hope that it gets better in time.

1-6: Pics of me 8 Month PP
Pic 7: Me Dressed
Pic 8: My Baby boy

Loving Myself (Jessica)

Having my son was the best thing that ever happened to me. It changed me in a million ways, but unfortunately it changed my body too. I was slightly overweight when I found out I was pregnant, and I wasn’t happy with my body to begin with. I’ve always struggled with my self esteem and diet, I was at my heaviest weight (166) the day I saw the two pink lines. When I delivered I was almost 230lbs. I didn’t FEEL like I was that big, because I was “all belly” or so I thought. I ate well when I was pregnant, but I ate much more than I needed to and I didn’t do any kind of exercise at all. My son was 9lbs 8oz at birth and just perfect. I wanted to breastfeed so I didn’t consider cutting calories or anything like that until he was 3 months or so and I knew my supply was going strong. I didn’t want to exercise because I read that it can make your breast milk taste sour and the baby will reject you (not sure if that’s true). I was miserable with my body though and felt so insecure and ugly. I have stretch marks all over my hips and stomach, down my thighs and the backs of knees. I started trying to work out but I was so out of shape and tired all the time that I would just give up. As I started moving my son into solid foods, I started reading more about nutrition- I decided to become a vegan. I wanted to be healthier and treat my body right- and then I started losing weight. It felt really encouraging. I went from 180 to 170lbs in the first month and fluctuated in the 160s for a while. I got pneumonia in the fall and lost 20lbs, it was awful. I was so sick I could barely walk or care for my son, even for weeks after I was ‘better’ I was so weak. I weighed 140lbs but as I started eating better and gaining my strength back I gained more weight. I’ve started doing yoga and walking more, and now my weight is around 147lbs but I feel strong and healthy. I’d like to ‘tone up’ my wiggly parts but I fear my stomach may be a lost cause. My son is 14 months now and he’s learning about body parts, his favorite is the belly button, and he waddles up to me and sticks his fingers in my belly button all the time. He thinks the squishy weird texture of my stomach is great, so I don’t mind it that much. The only people who see my stomach are my son and my fiance and they both love me. My fiance supports my weight loss/toning goals, but he makes me feel beautiful all the time anyway. Things are so different now from a year ago- my body is healed and my confidence is up. I know my body isn’t going to be the same as it was (especially my boobs, I miss them! They were so perky and small) but I feel so proud to have brought a life into this world, and I know it sounds kind of corny and cliched but my body is amazing for doing that. I don’t beat myself up for the things I can’t change. I found this website when I was pregnant and I remember thinking that I would never be comfortable or happy enough with my body to post, but here I am posting my “success”- which after everything it turns out it’s not related to my body at all, it just means that I am happy and I love myself!

Picture Info: 1+2: 12 weeks pregnant
3: 6 months pregnant
4-6: 5 months pp (170lbs)
7-9: today (147lbs)

~Age: 24
~Number of pregnancies and births: 1 pregnancy, 1 birth
~The age of your children, or how far postpartum you are: 1 son, he is 14 months old

I Am Beautiful (Julie)

I got pregnant at 18. I had a amaing little boy who weighed 10 pounds, and I myself, gained 98 pounds. I have stretch marks from the back of my legs to my breast. I felt so ugly, so ashamed and ruined. I thought I was a freak and lost who I was as a woman. Two years later I became pregnant with my second child, a 8 pound baby. I breast fed both my boys, and am still breast feeding the newest. My sister n law sent me your web site with the title “you are a real woman”. It hit me that my prebaby body did not define me as a woman. I now define my womanhood by being a mom. I grew two lifes inside my body and in return I am a real woman! These marks show the amazing journey I have been through.I am 23, I had a baby a year ago and I am beautiful….You are welcome to share my story and pictures. I hope by others seeing them, that they will know they are beautiful and to be proud of their body

Every Little Bird (Hollye Dexter)

This January, I somehow managed to get pregnant again, at forty-seven years old. I felt it, even as I went about my life, travelling, volunteering in my son’s school….but convinced myself it couldn’t be so. Surely I had missed my period because I was at that certain age. Just to assure myself, I finally took a pregnancy test, and that’s when the rollercoaster ride began. Yes, the impossible had happened, I was pregnant. My husband Troy and I couldn’t believe it, so we bought another test. Still pregnant. I looked it up online. At forty-seven, a woman has a .07% of becoming pregnant naturally, and a 50% chance of carrying the pregnancy to term. Leave it to me and my crazy life to beat the odds, I thought.

At first I cried. I wasn’t ready for this. I was afraid of all the things that could go wrong at my age. I would never, ever, ever have a moment alone with my husband. I already had two grown children, a five-year old, and even a grandchild living in my house! This was insane!

But then I looked at it from a different angle. Hadn’t God just put us through one of the worst years of our lives? For all the loss and grief we had gone through, here was a little sparkle of hope and possibility. I mean, I was just as frightened when I became pregnant at forty-one with my son Evan, and what a miracle he turned out to be. Maybe this was a gift, a sign that our luck was turning. Troy looked at me with such warmth in his eyes. He took to calling me “Little Mama”, patting my baby bump affectionately. My husband was smiling again, and that was miracle enough for me.

I was six weeks along.

Sunday morning I woke up bleeding.

My heart sank, but I knew nature was taking care of it’s own. I got up and went to the bathroom, and that’s where everything took a turn. I was suddenly overcome with intense nausea and ringing in my ears as I began to lose consciousness. Troy ran in and held me up as I collapsed. I was dripping in sweat, soaked through. Even my socks were wet. I could feel a pushing sensation in my lower back as everything went blank. A minute or two later, when I started to come back to awareness, I knew I had passed the baby. It was over, just like that.

All I wanted was to curl up quietly in my bed to cry and let this pass. But my doctor was concerned about internal bleeding, so I was told to go to the ER. I resisted but Troy didn’t want to take any chances with my health, so we went, and that is my greatest regret.

After sitting an hour in the waiting room, my name was finally called. Just then Brahm’s Lullaby was played on the overhead speaker.
The nurse smiled at me, “Hear that? It means a baby was just born upstairs!” I was ushered into a room, “What are we seeing you for?”

I looked at the floor, tears in my eyes. “I’m having a miscarriage.”
“Oh. I’ll need you to pee in this cup.”

In the bathroom, I slumped against the door and cried. I couldn’t believe the irony of the moment I was living. Upstairs a young woman was crying tears of joy, holding her newborn baby. Downstairs a middle-aged woman was weeping in the ER bathroom after losing her baby in a toilet.

Ten minutes later a young doctor with a blonde bouncy ponytail burst into our room. She grabbed my limp hand and shook it vigorously.
“Congratulations!” she said, smiling.
I was shocked, speechless.
“Your urine test just came back. You’re going to have a baby!”
I felt like I had been punched in the gut.
“I’m losing my baby…” I barely squeaked out.
She pulled her hand back. “Oh.” She fumbled with my chart, mumbled something about hormone levels, and cheerily insisted I could still be pregnant, you never know.

They sent me for ultrasound in another department where the technician called me “Dude” repeatedly while poking and prodding my tender, bleeding insides with an ultrasound wand and asking me what I thought of American Idol this season. Troy held his head close to mine, squeezed my hand and wiped the tears away that were now soaking my hair.

They sent me into another room to have five vials of blood drawn. Then to another room to have yet another pelvic violation by an obstetrician with a stunning lack of bedside manner. For five hours I was passed from doctor to technician to specialist, as my body emptied itself of the life that was thriving only hours before.

What all these people had in common was complete lack of empathy for what I was experiencing, treating me as someone with a routine “condition” that had to be handled.

I guess I can consider myself fortunate that this was my first (and only) miscarriage. Although my heart has broken for friends who have been through this kind of loss, I had never felt it myself. Now I’m in the awful club.

You may be wondering why I chose to put such private moments of my life on display for all to read. This is why. Because so many women out there have lost a baby to miscarriage or abortion, and have done so in silence. How many women have hidden their first three months of pregnancy just in case they should suffer a miscarriage? How many have carried that grief and loss all their lives, the pain, the shame, the feelings of failure and guilt, tucked away inside them, and why?

We aren’t private about losing a parent, a friend or a spouse. In times of grief, our community of friends and neighbors surround us with support and love. They make the phone calls for us, notifying every person in our phone books. They show up with meals, help take care of our kids. So why do women go underground with the loss of a baby?
Having gone through the myriad of emotions I think I know why.

I sobbed for two days. I felt like a failure. I lost the baby. It was something I did, or didn’t do. Something I ate, or didn’t eat, or something I thought. I didn’t pray enough. I’m too old, I’m defective, I am the reason the baby died…I felt shame, guilt, worthlessness. The hormonal storm brewing inside didn’t help either.

Part of the reason I wanted to stay private with this is because I didn’t want to hear comments like these:
“It’s for the best.”
“You’re lucky you already have three other children.”
“It’s nature’s way.”
“Did you really want a baby at forty-seven anyway?”

Yes, all the above are true, but I still lost a baby and I need my time to grieve. I don’t want my loss minimized or judged, and as a society we tend to do just that. What I’m left trying to figure out is why? Why is there such a lack of support for the women who are going through this? Why are there ten thousand websites telling you how to eat, sleep, exercise when you’re pregnant, but not ONE telling you how to take care of yourself when you’re going through a miscarriage or post-abortion? Should I stay off my feet? Eat more protein? Should I exercise? Silence….It’s up to you to figure out how to care for yourself physically in the throes of baby loss.

This is a very real part of life for women. It has happened to more of your friends and family members that you know. This really needs to change. We need to be able to talk about it, and to support each other through this.

On Monday, I stripped the bed, I washed everything, I threw things away. I lit candles everywhere. I took all the bloody remnants of the day before and burned them in my yard, letting the smoke wash over me. I put the ashes in a silver box, along with the EPT which had once said “Pregnant” but now was strangely blank, and buried it under my orange tree, placing a heavy concrete angel statue on top. I sat there on my knees under the orange tree, and in that moment I realized how lucky I was that nature decided this for me. This pregnancy was defective, and by the grace of God I was not forced to decide whether I could handle carrying that pregnancy to term. My dog Stitch nestled against me as I cried and said a prayer of gratitude. Just then I heard a hummingbird above me. It flew down in front of me, hovering, closer, then closer again, until it was inches in front of my face and I could see it’s tiny black bead eyes staring at me. We stayed like that, still, for a few seconds. Even my dog didn’t move. And then just as quickly it flew away, and somehow I knew…everything was going to be okay.

I hope that in going public with our personal story, someone else’s burden became a little bit lighter today. If you have lost a baby, no matter what the reason, please don’t carry it in silence any longer. Your grief deserves recognition, and none of us should ever suffer alone. I’m holding you all in my circle of healing, sharing your pain, honoring your loss.

In memory of every little bird that flew away…

~Age: 47
~Number of pregnancies and births: 4 pregnancies, 3 live births
~The age of your children, or how far postpartum you are: My children are 25, 20 and 5, and my grandson is 9 months.

Wondering if I’ll ever be able to wear a bikini again (Anonymous)

I’m 20 years old, almost 21 and I use to be 110 pounds and very confident. I gave birth 10 months ago and I feel quite depressed about my body. I don’t fit into any of my old clothes, I am 20 pounds heavier than what I use to be. I want to enjoy this summer with my beautiful son but I am afraid of wearing shorts or anything not baggy. Everyone use to tell me to give it 9 months to get back to your old self well I see no difference. My boobs have sagged, I have stretch marks on my hips and underneath my butt. I see celebrities get back to being perfect after 3 months… yet I can’t seem to even with dieting and exercising…. hopefully someday

20 years old
1 Pregnancy 1 birth
10 month old baby and 10 months pp