Submissions

My Fiancee Loves My Womanly Body – Update (Anonymous)

Bonnie (SOAM) Belly, Breasts, Postpartum, Second Pregnancy, Submissions, Update 6 Comments

Original post here.

It has been almost 4 weeks. I am doing much better about tracking my foods and being realistic on what I want vs what I need. It is difficult but empowering when I say no to eating at 10 pm with my fiancé. He has been very supportive though and says he doesn’t really want me to
Lose weight but he will love me no matter how I look. It’s got to be a lifestyle change for me though or it won’t last. Now is the time to do it- I’m almost done with my bachelors degree, just bought my first home and don’t want to spend anymore time positioning my clothes each time I sit or stand. I have not lost any pounds yet but my mom noticed my tummy was looking more trim. The most difficult part for me Is exercise. I need motivation! I joined a challenge at work so i hope that will help. If I can get healthy again I can do anything. My goal is to be running my own office from home by the time my kids start school- I really want to be available for my fiancé and kids. Our world is so complicated when 2 people must work full time and come home to a messy house with groceries needing bought, supper still needing to be made and kids needing help with homework. It’s the way it is though. Anyways I’d love some encouragement from my fellow do- it-all and do it with a smile moms! Sorry about the grammar and typos- I’m using my itouch!

Five Babies in Eight Years (Anonymous)

Bonnie (SOAM) Belly, Breasts, Child Loss, Four or More Pregnancies, Homebirth, Postpartum, Submissions 11 Comments

Age – 28
Pregnancies – 13
Births – 5
Children’s ages – 9, 6, 3, 2, 1
15 months postpartum

I had my first four babies in the hospital with varying degrees of intervention. I was fortunate to avoid a c-section, even though I begged for one when the contractions were right on top of each other and hard to deal with. In between my babies I had numerous miscarriages. In 2009 I got pregnant with my fifth baby, completely unexpectedly. I decided that since I couldn’t plan my pregnancy, I was going to plan my birth … so I hired a midwife and had a homebirth.

I had my son on October 27, 2009. He was 8 days overdue and weighed 10lb 6oz. He was born after a literally painless 30 minute labor. If I had known how much better homebirth would be, I wouldn’t have waited so long to have one!

I weighed 225 pounds when my son was born. I lost most of the weight quickly (after all, the majority of it was him!) But then I was stuck at 205 for a long time. I started exercising and changing my eating habits in June 2010 and have lost 30 pounds. I weigh 175 and am 5’4″ tall. I still need to lose 25 pounds to be a healthy weight, but I feel like a goddess where I’m at. Part of me would love to have a tummy tuck but at the same time I feel like the stretch marks are almost a badge of honor, proof of what my body has done.

This might seem silly but the only part of my body that really truly bugs me is my upper arms. I feel like they are inordinately large for my frame. But I am working on them, slowly but surely. Hopefully they will be toned and pretty for the summer …. but if not, there’s always next summer.

Scared Mother 25 Weeks (Mini)

Bonnie (SOAM) First Pregnancy, No Photos (Story Only), Pregnant, Question, Submissions 7 Comments

~Age: 19
~Number of Pregnancies: 1st One

This is my first pregnancy and I have always been a little bit self concious. I do everthing I can to make sure after birth I have my good body again far as jogging and applying lotion on my stomach. I kind of scared. All that matters is that I have a HEALTHY baby boy really. But what else can I do to get tha flat stomach?

Of Mothers and Beauty (Michelle L)

Bonnie (SOAM) Four or More Pregnancies, Mom over 30, No Photos (Story Only), Prose, Reader's Favorite, Submissions 22 Comments

Your age: 30
Number of pregnancies and births: 4

————–

“I hate using maps,” I said to him. Amongst sculptures and artifacts, oil canvases and mixed media, we wandered aimlessly and tirelessly. Hours passed like seconds. Nothing mattered to me but the air that he was breathing. The walls melted in the winter rain falling outside the plate glass windows, and the sun sank somewhere deep into eternity beneath the puddles of water. I followed him everywhere. The corridors seemed unending; like a house of mirrors that reflected a false doorway, one after the other. We passed through centuries of art, through wars and peace, across the world and back, and yet still, time loosed its hands and we lost grip of where we were, who we were, and even what we were. The only identities left were my reflection in his eyes, and his reflection in mine. Everything about him stuck to me like honey. Any time I turned a corner and he did not follow, the honey pulled itself into thin long strands of gold between us like spun sugar. This, I know, was when I slipped into love with him.

Now eventually, time returned. After the ink on the marriage certificate dried, bills were arriving in the mail, babies were crying, jobs were lost and discord began to settle in with the dust. I needed guidance. I looked in my reflection and saw a mother of three young babies with more stretch marks on her belly than pennies were in her bank account. I was stuck in a job making a living but not actually living. Life spun on an axis of baby bottles and stacks of mounting bills, all co-existing in an apartment with less than 1000 sq ft of living space. The grip around my neck could not have gotten any tighter without cutting off all of my air supply. That is, until I found myself pregnant for the fourth (and last) time when my youngest daughter was a mere four months old.

But I still hated maps. One day in a Psychology class, I read that spatial orientation can affect one’s ability to properly read and follow maps. I self-diagnosed this as my problem. Every road has a map; every step goes in a direction. My inability to identify with direction was surely my downfall, or so I assumed. Maybe my failing spatial orientation was the missing piece of my maternal progression. Maybe the two were meant to be entwined, and the thread between my failures and successes unraveled at some point in my life. Maybe I needed to stay positive. I fixated on the latter. If maps were written in a language that I could not comprehend, I could find another direction; one that would supersede my inabilities and guide me through the dark corridors that held the centuries of my soul, and now, the corridors of four very small children. No one is born into the earth without carrying a seed of all who were before him. I owed it to my children to find myself. This, I reasoned, was why I needed a different sort of compass to find my way. The ancients had sundials. Others had wind currents. Surgeons had x-rays, and lovers had intuition. I, however, had none of these things. I only had the stickiness of my soul and clouded words that sometimes became cohesive thoughts. As I grew in sentence structures, words became my guide.

Martin Luther King once quoted Amos at the Mason Temple in Memphis, TN when he said, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” It was a quote so poetic that it sank deep into my thoughts by the mere symphony that seemed to resonate from the syllables. Later in life, however, it resonated with me for different reasons. I slowly began to understand the booming voice of Dr. King and the purpose for which he gave his life. What I didn’t understand, however, was how we as mothers never adapted his passion and sharpened his words as a weapon to defend ourselves from our own superficial society. Dr. King identified the poor of America as one of the wealthiest group of people on the earth because of the strength in their combined numbers. “Never stop and forget that collectively, that means all of us together, collectively we are richer than all the nations in the world, with the exception of nine.” Collectively, we as mothers are richer than all the men in the world because of what we have given to our societies. As the poor are trampled upon because of their lacking economic status, so we, too, are trampled upon because of our lacking status in magazine covers, Victoria’s Secret catalogs and a number of other superficial outlets. There is no public praise of sagging breasts that gave our babies their first meal; thighs with cellulite because we rocked our babies to sleep every night instead of handing them to a nanny; deflated bellies that held our children so close to our hearts that their muscular walls gave out and left us with empty skin. There is no acknowledgment of mothers because it seems we denote something from which we all search frantically to run – true love, unconditional love, love that extends its arms from time into eternity. We are a few generations that span across a 16 and Pregnant era, a “Love Kills Slowly” era, an era of sordid affairs, broken homes, and an era in which The Real Housewives have overtaken the maternal role of June Cleaver, Carol Brady and even Lucille Ball. But we are the richest group of human beings on the face of the earth, if for no other reason than our ability to bond with a human life. When we stop scrutinizing ourselves long enough to look around us, absorb what is hurting the mother beside us, and acknowledge that we, too, suffer from the same – this is when our justice will roll down like waters and our righteousness will flow like a mighty stream. When we embrace ourselves, our streaming stretch marks that roll down our bellies, our voices that overtake like a mighty stream in our children’s lives, then and only then will we see freedom in ourselves and in the world around us.

It is vital for us as women to return to the core of ourselves, and not merely in a moment of gratitude. In band societies, such as the San of the Kalahari Desert, the hunter who kills an animal to provide for his family is not the owner of the kill. Rather, the maker of the arrow that was used in the kill is the owner of the meat that is brought back to the tribe. Let us always remember that our children are our arrows. No matter what religion you are, remember the Psalm of King David that said, “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them; they shall not be ashamed…” (127:4-5). Let us never be ashamed of who we are, where we are, or what we have given to our world around us. Though it takes a village to raise a child, let not our society take the gratitude that is to be bestowed upon each of us as the creator of the arrows. Let us teach the world more than how to raise a child – let us teach them to respect the shape of a mother by first respecting ourselves.

Breast Envy (Kerry)

Bonnie (SOAM) Before Pregnancy, Belly, Breasts, First Pregnancy, Postpartum, Submissions, Update 23 Comments

1 pregnancy/birth 20 months pp
Age 20
34b to 42 D to 34b

So I posted at 1 year postpartum and was pretty sure I would not post again until I was pregnant or pp with my second child, (we are going to start trying in the fall!) but I’ve been having some insecurities with my breasts lately, which I never thought would happen, so I came here for support. I never thought I would care what my breasts looked like because to me they were simply for nourishing my children and up till a few months ago I didn’t care what they looked like. Before I got pregnant they were small but I didn’t care. I never wore a bra and loved how perky they were. Now if I don’t wear a bra I feel 60. I do not hide them, nor am I ashamed, but I’d just like to know there are more momma’s out there with “droopy” breasts like mine. I am still breast feeding and they are smaller than they were before I got pregnant! I am a little apprehensive about what they will look like after baby #2, or even 3. Did any of you experience this? Will there even be any boob left? lol I just bought my first push-up bras ever last week! When I stand sideways you see rib cage and a little bulge of skin with a nipple on it.I’ve gone from a 34b prebaby to 42d early days nursing to 34b after 20 months and still nursing. I have also lost 70lbs since having my son, after gaining 60 so I’m sure not having much extra body fat adds to the lack of breasts. A friend of mine got breast implants, and she is now “happy with her body” I feel sad that she wasn’t happy with her body before, but I also feel hypocritical that sometimes I envy her for having perky boobs again. But I guess it is all part of the journey. I know my insecurities may seem so trivial to some of you, but I’ve been through a lot with my body, and love it and appreciate it, but sometimes I still feel like I’m the only young mom out there like this! Don’t we all? I just want the silence to end! I’m putting my SOAM bumper sticker on this week!

“start a trend, love your body” prepregnancy
other picture 20 months pp-20 years old

Almost 3 years pp update (Natalia)

Bonnie (SOAM) Belly, Breasts, Butt, Postpartum, Submissions, Update 15 Comments

Previous entry here.

Age: 21
Number of pregnancies and births: 2 pregnancies, one birth

This is just a quick update from a previous post. I can’t stop visiting this site. It has opened my eyes just as much as my son has. I’m now almost 3 years post partum. I actually gained a little weight from my previous post and my breasts have gotten just a little bigger. The weight gain has been from poor eating habits, but I’m fine with where I’m at, not worried really. I’m dating a wonderful man and marriage is in the air. We’ve talked about building a larger family, which I’m excited for :-) This is the body I am enjoying for now, and as it changes more later in life, I honestly can’t wait to see what happens. The stretch marks have definitely faded, and the loose skin has tightened a bit. I’m sure if I actually gave a darn about exercising I could ‘tighten’ a bit more. But overall, I’m happy with everything I have :-) especially the two great men in my life who have accepted me in every possible way. This site is amazing and I hope it’s still here when have more kids. Mommies, don’t forget, we are all in this together. And I appreciate every post and picture on here. I wish I could meet you all :-)

First 5 pics are me now.
Next 2 pics are my son Ronin Lee
Last pic is me and my fiance

My Mother Shape is Beautiful (Melissa Ann)

Bonnie (SOAM) Belly, Cesarean, First Pregnancy, Postpartum, Submissions, Twins 11 Comments

My life has been so enriched by my identical twin daughters, but my body… for a long time I thought it had fallen to shreds. Yesterday I challenged myself to find the beauty in the way I’ve been stretched. This photo is my result.

~Age: 26
~Number of pregnancies and births: 1 Pregnancy 2 Births
~The age of your children, or how far postpartum you are: 15 Months

012511-melissaann-1

My body has been destroyed, and I’ll have nothing to show for it: Update (Michelle)

Bonnie (SOAM) Adoption, Belly, First Pregnancy, Postpartum, Submissions, Teen Mom 50 Comments

Pregnancies/Births: 1 pregnancy/birth
Age: 18
7 weeks postpartum

If you haven’t read my previous post, please do so, otherwise this one might not make too much sense.

I thought after I was no longer pregnant I would be devastated with how my body looked, but now I’m finding that I just don’t flat out care.

My due date was November 12 2010, and the day passed without a single sign of me beginning the first stage of labor. Then I lost my mucus plug and a few hours afterwards the contractions began. The next morning I went to the hospital and after checking me and monitoring me for an hour they sent me home, saying it would take me a while to dilate more (I was 1 cm but 70% effaced) and that my contractions only needed to be LONGER, because they were already pretty strong. So I spent the entire day in misery with horrible and painful contractions, not wanting to go back to the hospital just to be sent home again. That evening I went to the adoptive family’s house(the adoptive mom and I are close, she went to all of my appointments with me and was to be present for the birth) to labor there, and after less than an hour my water broke and off to the hospital we were! When they checked me I was 4 cm and begging for an epidural. Before I could get one though they had to get my IV in, and let me tell you, they took their damn sweet time doing that! My first nurse didn’t want to bother trying so she went and got another one to do it. I actually can’t remember much of that hour because the pain was so intense, but after they got the epidural in they waited ten minutes to check me again and found that I was 9 cms, after only an hour and a half at the hospital. No wonder I was in so much pain. They took me off the epidural medicine and then I started pushing, which was only for an hour, and my beautiful baby boy was born at 12:01 am on November 14th 2010, the day before national adoption day.

I had requested that he be taken out of the room immediately because I knew I would not be able to handle hearing him crying, hell, I didn’t know if I could handle meeting him the next morning either. He came out with the cord wrapped around his neck and couldn’t breathe for a few minutes, but when he started crying I started BAWLING. I have never cried so hard in my life or ever been in less control of my body before. Uncontrollable sobbing overtook me so much that I didn’t even feel the delivery of the placenta or the doctor stitching up my second degree tear. I sobbed for probably twenty minutes straight, and my baby wasn’t taken out of the room for the first ten minutes even though I had requested otherwise. To hear him crying… so many thoughts were running through my head. “How could I have ever thought about an abortion?” “I don’t want you out. Get back in my tummy.” “You’re mine, I can’t give you away.” “How could I have ever hated my body while you were in it?” And so many others. I was in complete emotional overload and lost complete control of my body. I was shaking so violently and sobbing so hard that I was sure there was nothing else in the world except the darkness behind my eyelids.

I still cry every time I remember his birth.

My boyfriend and I went to meet our baby around three that night. My boyfriend is 100% Korean so we were sure he would look exactly like his daddy… but it’s the opposite. He looked exactly like me. He had my chin. My cheekbones. My lips. My feet. My fingers. My forehead. My legs. Everything except his nose, which is a perfect mixture of the two of ours, his eyes, and his hair. Having him look like me made it so much harder to give him away.

Now that he isn’t in my tummy anymore I want my bulging belly back. I miss the heartburn every night, the way he got hiccups almost every hour, how he always stuck out his elbow from the side of my tummy. I want the acne back. I want every single bright purple stretch mark. I want my leaking breasts. I want the swollen feet, ankles, and hands. I want the carpal tunnel. I want to not be able to reach down and touch my feet. I want to be kept up all night because it’s so uncomfortable to lay in bed. I want it all back so I can have my baby in me another day. I feel vacant.

Empty.

Hollow.

I don’t care that my body is ravaged and destroyed, that this isn’t what an 18 year old body should look like. I just want my sweet baby boy that I carried for nine months. I should have cherished every day, instead of counting down until it was over. I can’t take back the things I said or the things I felt, as much as I wish could.

One of my nurses made me a plaster of his hand, and one of his foot too. I’m afraid that if I touch them they will become marked by my filthy touch, and I can’t look at them because I feel as if my gaze is unworthy. Every nurse I had in the hospital told me how proud they were of me and what a great thing I was doing, but no amount of praise can take the pain away. When I was in the hospital it was better because I knew my baby was down the hall from me. Safe, but still within reach. Now he isn’t. Every dream I’ve had since he was born has been either about him or how I’m no longer pregnant, but without a baby. I jolted awake the second night home from the hospital because I thought I heard him crying.

I know I made the best decision possible for my baby, that he will have such a wonderful life now, but it still is hard. I know I am going to need therapy.

When pregnant, I used to draw a smiley face on the shower door through the condensation every day while showering. My first shower back home was no different, but then after I drew it I realized that the last time I drew one my baby had hiccups and was contentedly snoozing in my tummy. I haven’t drawn one since.

Throughout my pregnancy, I gained 98 pounds, but I lost 40 of it two weeks after the birth. All of the “acne” that I had on my back, actually turned out to be the PUPPS rash, and it cleared up after labor. The worst case she’d ever seen, my nurse had said. So bad, that my entire back is scarred up from it. My stretch marks are terrible; in my armpits, on my sides, breasts, stomach, all down my inner AND outer thighs, on my entire butt, behind my knees and on my calves, and halfway down the backs of my thighs.I know they will never go away.

I’ve gone to see my baby on multiple occasions now, and it is seven weeks since I had him. He doesn’t look so much like me anymore, but he is so beautiful, and my body is equally as beautiful, because it created such a wonderful brand new human being that I am going to be tied to for the rest of my life. I created and nurtured a human being for nine months and went through labor, the most natural and primal thing that can happen to a person. I now feel like I can go through anything in life and I KNOW I will survive.

My baby is beautiful, and so am I.

Picture # 1 is 5 days postpartum
Picture # 2 is 7 weeks postpartum (not much of a difference, as you can see)
Picture # 3 is my baby an hour after he was born
Picture # 4 baby at 5 weeks
Picture # 5 baby at 5 weeks again

22 and 2 Kids Later (Jenny)

Bonnie (SOAM) Before Pregnancy, Belly, First Pregnancy, Postpartum, Pregnant, Second Pregnancy, Submissions 13 Comments

My children are definately the best things to ever happen to me. I first got pregnant right before my 19th birthday and had a beautiful 8 lb baby boy. Before i got pregnant i only weighed 97 lbs and ended up 139 lbs when i gave birth. After i had him it didnt take too long to get back into shape. Everything went back to normal, other than a few strtch marks but nothing major. I could not have been happier. Then at 21 i got pregnant again. I was a little worried this time things wouldnt go back the same. I started this pregnancy out at 105 lbs and ended at 132 lbs. I gained less weight but my belly was so big. Then on August 31th 2010 i gave birth to another beautiful boy. This one only weighing 7 lbs 10 oz. Even though i am only 4 months pp things are not going back the same. I actually only weigh 98 lbs right now but my stomach is horrible. I dont know if you can fix wrinkled skin. Its something im having a very hard time dealing with. My fiance cares alot about appearence and even though he says it doesnt bother him, i feel like it does. Which makes me not want him to look at me naked. I’m glad i found this site. It has helped me feel alot better about myself and enough so that i wated to share my story. Maybe hearing strangers opinions might help. Thanks,

Age- 22
Number of pregnancies and births- 2
Age of children- 2 ( will be 3 in march) and 4 months
Post Partum- 4 months

1st picture- Pregnant with first child
2nd picture- After first child. About a year PP
3rd picture- Pregnant with second child
4th picture- Before children
5th picture- Now, 4 month PP

One Year and 60 Pounds Down (Jess)

Bonnie (SOAM) Belly, Breasts, Cesarean, Cesarean Scar and/or Incision, First Pregnancy, Postpartum, Submissions, Teen Mom, Update 20 Comments

Original entry here.

20 Years Old
1 Year PP
Pre Pregnancy 124
End Of Pregnancy 194
Currnetly 135

This has been the fastest year of my life… I’ll be honest… I thought i would be in better shape by now… Some days I think I’m looking pretty good and with a little toning maybe even hot someday… Other days I could just cry… I see the wrinkly texture left on my belly from the enormous amount of weight I gained and the stretch marks and it just seems hopeless…

I haven’t lost much weight since my last post… but I’m going to really start working on it… Bathing suit season starts in about 5 months and if I could make it down below 120 I would be in heaven. That seems like a reasonable goal… but we’ll see how that goes… To be honest after working a full time job and taking care of a baby who I believe will be entering into his terrible twos verrry early the last thing i really feel like doing is exercising… but I don’t feel like i have the right to complain if I can’t at least try…

It’s just so hard seeing these other girls my age with babies who are back down to 100 pounds within a month… my prepregnancy jeans still wont go up past my thighs… I think the thing i’m moost afraid of though is that I wont ever be able to love myself unless I look like I just walked off of the Victorias Secret runway… and let’s be honest… thats never going to happen… I’ve noticed it’s alot easier to love myself on days that I keep the tv on cartoons and dont leave the house lol…. The world can be such a negative place…

This has been such a hard road… not just physically all the changes my body has went through but emotionally too… I know my relationship with my sons father will never be great as long as I can’t love my body.. He get’s mad at me if i try to keep my shirt on or cover my stomach when we’re getting intimate… So he can’t be that grossed out by me right? It’s just hard knowing that some of his exes actually had the body of an actress or model… I think he loves me though…

Hopefully I can continue to grow and be more accepting of my body after what all it’s been through… and hopefully on my next post I’ll be sending in pictures of myself rocking a bikini this summer… which is something i have never had the confidence to do…