Submissions

On My Way (Ashley)

Bonnie (SOAM) Belly, Butt, First Pregnancy, Postpartum, Pregnant, Submissions 5 Comments

Will I ever be 100% comfortable with my body? When I was a child I had nicknames like stick. As I got older my woman body started to develop. I got breast and a nice, round bum. I was always so self-conscious about it. It became what I was known for, my bum and I hated it. I became pregnant with my son when I was 22 years old. I never felt so beautiful in my ENTIRE life. I loved the way I looked, the shiny hair, the beautiful bump and I was one of the lucky ones who never really got stretch marks until near the end of my pregnancy. I loved being pregnant but I couldn’t wait to meet my little boy. He was born on October 8th 2010. Giving birth was one of the most amazing accomplishments I have ever done in my entire life. Now being almost 5 months post-partum my body image and outlook took a complete nose-dive. I am working on trying to have a positive body image but as you all probably know, it isn’t easy. I swear to you EVERY part of my body got bigger after giving birth. My shoes, jeans, shirts, underwear, bras all don’t fit anymore. I would do almost anything to get back that body I was so self-conscious about before. I have a saggy belly and breasts and the cellulite on my bum and thighs is horrific. I am 20lbs heavier than I was before I got pregnant. I am lucky to have a partner who stills tells me how beautiful I am, even if I don’t feel like it and hopefully one day, I will believe him again. I am a VENUS! ?

Age:23
#of pregnancies – 1
#of births – 1
4.5 months post-partum

Hard Work Pays Off (Georgia)

Bonnie (SOAM) Belly, First Pregnancy, Postpartum, Submissions, Tattoo, Update 4 Comments

Previous entries here, here and here.

Hello there ladies. I wanted to share my update. I have a few others on here. Although I said I wasnt going to have another post until 1 year postpartum, I thought it was time. I am 10 months PP. Total I have lost 50 pounds. I work out 3 days a week, usually using Lindsay Brins post natal bootcamp or Jillian Michaels 3o day shred. I was eating 1200 calories a day, in 5 small meals. Now I eat 1500-1800 to maintain my weight. If you have some baby weight still, remember it took 9 months to put it on. Give yourself 9 months to take it off. If you feel like you dont have time to workout or eat right, try doing it slowly. Changing your lifestyle takes a lot of time. The great thing about making such a huge change, is even though you might gorge yourself with donuts today, you can start again tomorrow. Everyone has bad days. You just have to get back up and try again.

The truth is, I am STILL not completely happy with the way I look. I even weigh 20 pounds less than I did before I even got pregnant. I dont think I will ever be completely satisfied. What woman is? I think no matter how much weight we lose, or how much our stretch marks fade.. we will never be perfectly happy. We simply have to learn to love what we have. I am still working on that. In the mean time, I try to concentrate on the good things. My adorable baby, my amazing husband, family and friends. Life is good.

My husband and I are actually planning on trying for baby #2 this year. Scary, but now that I have gone through the cycle of gaining and losing weight. I know I can handle it.

First pictures is a collage of my progress. Second is me, 10 months pp, sitting down to show my belly. Third is my son and I at 10 months. Fourth is my son 10 months.

Age: 25
1 pregnancy, 1 birth.
My son is 10 months old.

Blooming Second Pregnancy (Anonymous)

Bonnie (SOAM) Belly, Mom over 30, Pregnant, Second Pregnancy, Submissions 15 Comments

This is my second pregnancy and I am 33 weeks now and as with my first pregnancy I am absolutely massive. I am a proud 32 year old mummy of a lovely 6 year old girl delivered via emergency c section and hoping for a natural birth this time round. Must admit not relishing the challenge of getting rid of the jelly belly once baby is here!!!

Finding beauty in every imperfection (Jordan)

Bonnie (SOAM) Belly, Breasts, First Pregnancy, Positive Body Image/Words of Enouragement, Postpartum, Pregnant, Submissions, Update 8 Comments

21 years old
2 pregnancies, 1 birth
13 months pp

I want to start off by saying this site is amazing, I love reading all of the posts on here. However, i don’t like seeing that it is such a struggle for some women to love the bodies that their children gave them. I know it’s difficult, I’ve been there and i too struggled some but not anymore. There are two things you can do, one- accept the skin that you are in and love your body, if not for what it looks like for what it has blessed you with, or two- If you are unhappy with your weight gain, work to lose it.. and don’t get discouraged, Try to remember.. it takes 9 months to gain that weight and for some, it takes 9 months plus some to work it off. I see so many beautiful mothers, with nice bodies on here posting about how awful they think they look and i’m sitting here saying to myself.. you’ve got to be kidding. We, ladies, are our worst critics and one of the things that most of us do, and shouldn’t is compare our bodies to others which leads to self esteem issues that simply shouldn’t be there. Embrace the change and Find beauty in your new bodies! There is beauty in everything, some people may not see it and those are the people that shouldn’t matter.

I’m 5’2 and before pregnancy i weighed 120 lbs, I wasn’t very confident and i always wanted to be thinner than i was, and i wanted bigger boobs.. even though i see now, that there wasn’t a thing wrong with my body, back then.. it wasn’t so easy. During my pregnancy i gained 35 lbs, and the weight gain didn’t bother me because i was gaining weight for my son. My son was born, January 10th 2010 weighing 6 lbs and 10 0z, 21 inches long. After he was born, i ate healthy and worked out when i could (which wasn’t often) and it still took me about 10 months to get down to my pre-pregnancy weight. Now that my son is older, and I’ve recently became a stay at home mom, i exercise more regularly and i do not diet, but surprisingly i’m a jean size smaller than i was before baby. I’m content with my body, stretch marks and all. When i look at myself naked in the mirror, i do not find myself disgusting.. i see the complete opposite, When i look at my stretch marks and wrinkled skin, i think of the very reason they are there in the first place and i appreciate my body for all that it has done. I hope all of you mama’s out there can too, start appreciating your bodies.. you are all beautiful!

-Love- Jordan, Colin’s mommy.

Photos:

(1,2) 4 months into pregnancy
(3) 8 months into pregnancy
(4) 8 months pp
(5) Now, 13 months pp at 118 lbs
(6) Stretch marks
(7) Mommy’s little monster

Updated here.

38 Weeks, 4 Days (Bethany Actually)

Bonnie (SOAM) Belly, Pregnant, Second Pregnancy, Submissions 9 Comments

Originally posted over at BethanyActually.com back in November.

I’ve said it more than once: I don’t do belly shots.

I’m grateful to have had two healthy pregnancies. I have seen too many friends and relatives struggle with infertility and grieve over ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages to ever take my relative ease in getting pregnant and carrying babies to term for granted. I think it’s amazing that my body is equipped, like all mothers’ bodies, to do such miraculous things as grow, birth, and nurse babies. I think a pregnant woman’s body can be beautiful, and I don’t mind other people’s weekly belly shots a bit.

That said, however, I will confess: I don’t take photos of my belly mostly because I don’t like being pregnant at all. It’s a means to an end for me. I don’t like feeling the baby moving around—it’s usually uncomfortable and sometimes downright painful. Maternity clothes annoy me beyond telling. It drives me crazy how absent-minded and butterfingered pregnancy makes me. And can we talk about how much I hate sleeping on my side? I hate it with the fire of a thousand suns.

Before Troy and I were parents and people asked how many kids we wanted, I always said, “We’ll have one and see how that goes.” When Annalie was born, I remember thinking just minutes after, Yeah, I could do that again someday. Giving birth wasn’t exactly the most fun thing I’ve ever done, but I did it and when I was done I was proud of myself.
Breastfeeding wasn’t exactly a picnic at first. Annalie being a tiny preemie made it a challenge from the start. Added on top of that, she had a not-quite-right latch that went uncorrected so long that it affected my milk supply and led to weeks of pumping and using a supplemental nursing system which was just as fun as you might imagine. (No fun at all. I should blog all about that someday.) But I was determined to succeed, partly from stubbornness and partly because I am lazy and breastfeeding is so much less work than bottles, whether they’re used for pumped breastmilk or formula.

Eventually, we realized we were going to have to supplement the nursing with a few ounces of formula per day. I gladly said good-bye to the SNS and we reluctantly added one bottle-feeding to our day. It affected how often Annalie nursed each day exactly zero. She still nursed every hour or two, night and day, till she started eating solids a couple of months later. Then she cut out maybe one nursing session per day. She didn’t sleep through the night till she was 13 months old, and she continued nursing till just past her second birthday.

I guess what I’m trying to convey is that although I don’t like being pregnant, I do appreciate other parts of having babies. Giving birth was painful but amazing. Breastfeeding was difficult at first but we stuck with it, found our groove, and I daresay we became experts at it. So although I have been grumping my way through this pregnancy and pointedly not taking weekly photos of my growing belly, I am looking forward to meeting our second daughter and enjoying her babyhood in a way I couldn’t with Annalie because this time I have experience under my belt.

Last night, as I passed by the mirror in our bedroom just before going to bed, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and the cozy-looking room beyond me. I remembered this photo of Jen’s and grabbed my camera. Here’s hoping I won’t have many more opportunities to take photos like this one before we meet our baby girl.


38 weeks, 4 days

Elliora Violet was born on November 29, 2010.

25 Year Old Mom of 2 (Emma)

Bonnie (SOAM) Belly, Birth, Breasts, Homebirth, Infertility, Postpartum, Pregnant, Submissions 10 Comments

Being pregnant is one of the most beautiful experiences a woman can ever experience. I never felt more feminine as I did when I was pregnant and expecting. and, nurturing my child after-wards by breastfeeding, I’m curvier than I was pre-pregnancy (with both) – I had a home birth with my second, and it was one of the most wonderful experiences i’ve ever had in my life! I can’t wait to do it again.

I also wanted to include, that there was a huge age gap between my children due to struggling with infertility for years before finally conceiving our second baby.

~Age: 25
~Number of pregnancies and births: 2
~The age of your children, or how far postpartum you are: almost 7 years, and 11 weeks at time of entry.

Photos are between 4 days and 8 weeks postpartum.

The Shape that Love Built (Amanda)

Bonnie (SOAM) Belly, Pregnant, Submissions, Third Pregnancy, Update 54 Comments

Age: 23
Number of births: 2, soon to be 3
Ages of children: 5 years old, 18 months old, and yet to be born

It started with a comment on a photo I posted on facebook. For the record, I am not nude in the picture, nor am I anywhere NEAR naked. I simply have my belly exposed. She deleted me while I was in the hospital, waiting for a room to be induced.

Conny ***** Girl, you should keep that covered.
Conny ***** Don’t look … it’s kind of hard not to and say all you want about pregnant women being beautiful, to me they are butt ugly. Arrogant too, with their ‘don’t l ike it, don’t look’. IGYGWYD These days people put anything on FB.
Conny ***** Delete me if you want, I don’t care. You all need glasses Pregnant women beautiful … LOL
Conny ***** Delete me if you want if you don’t like what I have to say. I say highly pregnant women exposing their naked bodies is uncalled for. Call it beautiful all you want, you need glasses. I think pregnancy is ugly. Just my personal opinion, but it is MY opinon and I’m entitled to it.
Conny ***** You have been deleted. Any more messages from you and you will be reported for harrasment.

I’m sitting here crying because I am sad. I’m actually not sad about my body, or the way it looks.. not because its a Hollywood post-baby body.. but because I appreciate it. I’m sad because someone called pregnancy “ugly”.. and said that she thought that pregnant women were “butt ugly”.. the words themselves did not hurt me. Well… maybe a little.. but not in the way you’d think. It hurt to know that there are women out there who really are ashamed of their bodies. That they’re ashamed that they arent “perfect” anymore.. that they think of themselves as “flawed”.

I am 23 years old, I have 2 children, and am 38 weeks pregnant with my 3rd baby. My body is not Hollywood material anymore.. my body is quite “flawed” by those standards.

However.. its the body that love built. Every ounce of extra fat, every stretch mark, every sag is physical proof that I brought fourth not one, but THREE perfect miracles.

I am sad for her. I’m sad that she feels that pregnancy, birth, and post-baby bodies are not beautiful.

I am not ashamed of my body. I love it to pieces.. afterall, if I cant love myself, how can I expect someone else to?

My belly sags when I’m not pregnant, as do my breasts. Right now my belly is swollen and large, as are my breasts which are full of milk.

My bum has cellulite, I have stretch marks, and I have thighs that applaud me whenever I walk anywhere.
I do not care that some dont like it. I may not be “sexy” by most peoples standards…

but that does not mean I am not beautiful, and it does NOT mean that I am ugly.

I then wrote this…

Amanda *******
My sons show off my baby belly to the world because they know a little secret that not everyone appreciates… my body’s “beauty” was destroyed in order to bring perfection into this world.. not once, but twice, and I am prepared to do it a third time. I have brought miracles to life.. and I’ll be damned if I hide the body that did it. I love the “beauty” within the “uglyness” that are my battle scars of motherhood.

Amanda ******* I am not ashamed of having the shape of a mother. I am not ashamed of my scars. I am not ashamed of anything that my wonderful children have left on my body. This is the body that love built. I am however ashamed to breathe the same air as someone who can call me “butt ugly” simply because I am not flat-bellied, toned, or trim at this moment.

Updated here.

6 Babies, 5 C-Sections, 4 Daughters, 3 TOL’s, 2 Son’s, 1 Love (Stacy)

Bonnie (SOAM) Belly, Breasts, Cesarean, Four or More Pregnancies, Homebirth, Mom over 30, Positive Body Image/Words of Enouragement, Postpartum, Submissions, Update, VBAC 14 Comments

Previous entries here, here and here.

My last posting this past summer was very freeing for me. I loved the photos, and for the first time really saw beauty in my imperfect body. I feel strong, and continue to grow in inner and outer strength. These photos were taken at our local hot springs & a then there are a couple of family photos. I love this website… and life :-)

~Age: 30
~Number of pregnancies and births: 6
~The age of your children, or how far postpartum you are: 12, 7, 5, 4, 3, 23mo– 23 mo PP

11 Weeks Postpartum (Anonymous)

Bonnie (SOAM) Before Pregnancy, Belly, Breasts, Eating Disorder, First Pregnancy, Postpartum, Pregnant, Submissions, Tattoo, Update 13 Comments

Previous entries here, here and here.

23 years old
1 pregnancy
1 birth
11wks postpartum and -30lbs

I decided it was time to finally write my postpartum update. I ended up carrying to 41 weeks and giving birth completely naturally on November 28, 2010. And before anyone congratulates me on that, I did not want or anticpate a natural birth– I just progressed much faster than the doctors had time to give me any pain medication! I went to the hospital at 3:30am and started pushing a little before 8:00am. Back labor, all the way. I wanted to die; yeah, it hurt like hell, and I had no way of knowing that I would give birth before 9am. So I’m sitting there on the gourney thinking “oh my god, this hurts… am I going to suffer like this fr twelve hours or more?!?” But by the time I was asking for pain meds (in a very weak, pathetic voice, lol) the doctor came in to check me, saw me shivering and said “we need to get her in a room, she’s gonna have this baby NOW!” So I suppose I should just buck up and be happy that I didn’t end up birthing my son in the waiting room… wouldn’t that be an interesting story?

As it turned out, Baby Aleksandr was born with no long-term complicatons. There was fetal distress, meconium, a drop in BP, and the cord was wrapped around his neck. My husband was not allowed to cut the cord because they wanted to get our son medical attention right away. He was 8lbs 3oz and 21 inches long! Tore me sideways and I needed … quite a few stitches. At least ten, I think….

A lot has happened to both me and my son since giving birth… my husband was deployed almost immediately after Aleks was born. On Christmas Day I got a call saying my grandmother had fallen into a diabetic coma, so me and my mom packed up and lived with my grandpa two states away for about to and a half weeks while we waited for my grandma to die. Having to see her all bruised up when she was in her coma (from dialysis and everything else the doctors did to her), and then seeing her 4-day-old unebalmed body is something I’ll never be able to forget. She had specifically said she did not want to be embalmed, and her death landed right around New Years when the cemetery was closed… because apparently someone thinks that people don’t die around New Years, I don’t know.

Once I got back up in Washington my Mom had to go back to her home in Oregon, so I was by myself again with a newborn who had his schedule all messed up from traveling so much. I had doctors appointments for follow-ups, IUD insertions, I was in the ER twice in the last three weeks: once because my postpartum bleeding was so heavy that I was dizzy and nauseous (I’ve had heavy periods before, this much blood actually scared me) and a second time for what turned out to be rectocele. I’ve been jumping through hoops trying to see doctors and hoping I can have it corrected with surgery. Finally saw a third doctor today to get the official green light for surgery and was told it could be worse and I would just have to live with it. I was in tears. The doctor hadn’t even given me any options, just told me I’d probably need to take laxatives for the next few months, maybe longer. I’m going to get a second opinion (technicaly a fourth opinion), but I’m waiting until my husband comes home because I’m starting to get depressed having to make all these medical decisions by myself. And no, he has not been allowed to take emergency leave to be with me OR take his baby leave.

I was 195lb when I gave birth. I wasn’t really concerned with stretch marks because I grew my hips in the 8th grade, lol. Yeah, I was a little put off by the ones scattered south of my belly button, but I know I can live with them. The’ve already faded a LOT, and … well, I live in Washington, it’s not like bikini weather is very common. I’ve sent my husband pictures of my postpartum progress (I’m 165 now), and he tells me tha I’m not only beautiful, but strong and assures me I’m taking excellent care of our son. Because of everything that’s been happening in the last 11 weeks, I haven’t been able to exercise as much as I’d like. Between stitches, travelling, bleeding, worrying that my organs are gonna fall out my butt… I did gain an interesting perspective on my need to take care of myself. It’s not just getting down to prepregnancy size and weight that’s important to me. I know I still have 10+ lbs to go before I’m back at my prepregnancy weight, but other things take precedence. I know I’ve been very lucky in regaining much of my shape without going out of my way to acquire it, and I do have my genes to thank for that. I know as soon as I no longer have to value an hour of sleep over a 15 minute run, I’ll be quick to bounce back completely. But I can be patient.
My husband was able to come home for a night (due to military work, not so he could stay –boo), and he finally got to see his little boy smile. And somehow it made me smile and broke my heart at the same time :) I can’t wait for Aleks to grow up and become a little hellion like both me and his daddy were. He looks so much like his father– but he’s got my lips! lol I’m glad I had the Shape of a Mother site to help m through my pregnancy and postprtum period. This site is amazing with its support. Thank you all!

Pictures are:
prepregnancy
39.5 weeks pregnant
3 hours after giving brith
2 weeks PP
7 weeks PP
me and my son!
11 weeks PP
my two handsome men!