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This web site is absolutely fabulous. I was 20 when I attended the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival and had the opportunity to see lots and lots of naked women of all ages, shapes and sizes. Finally — what real women look like!

I have always been super-skinny. It was a source of frustration while growing up, because I am super-tall, too, and the beanpole look was not at all “in” in the 1980s. Now I am very comfortable with my body.

I think women of all sizes are beautiful, and all you mamas, be proud of your “battle scars”! Tiger stripes are beautiful and so are ours.

I was 145 lbs when I got pregnant with my daughter. I gained 50 lbs. Now it’s 4 months postpartum and I’ve lost all but fifteen of those pounds, mostly from breastfeeding. I am hoping to keep them! My belly is soft and squishy — I like touching it. I have some gentle stripes. My linea nigra is still dark, though it has flaked off with some scrubbing… I still have some tied up in scar tissue just below my navel, and I don’t see that going anywhere.

22 weeks:

40 weeks:

18 weeks postpartum:

Hi

I’m Ash, aged 32, and mom to two beautiful boys. I’ve had three pregnancies. These photos were taken during my last pregnancy and after.

I felt huge during my pregnancies. I carried really toward the front. The stretch marks came with my first pregnancy (with a girl) when I was 18, and I think they were worse because I had hyperemesis, extreme stress and a very poor diet before the pregnancy. My stomach looked like a giant bloodshot eye during that pregnancy.

When I was pregnant with my second child seven years later the strechmarks went pink, but didn’t really stretch and by the third they just stayed white. The skin on my tummy is very fragile now and even something simple like my pants being too tight will cause blood blisters to form!

I breastfed my two boys for a total of five years. My boobs are pretty much the same as they were before the pregnancies (an A cup), but with a bit more droop. I gained around 35 kilos (around 70+ pounds) in the process of the two pregnancies and breastfeeding and I’ve lost 20 (50 lb) of them thought a lot of exercise and diet, which I began once I had stopped breastfeeding. Still some more to go. I was never thin before so I don’t have a very svelte me to aim for, just normal.

I saw a woman at the gym who had a tummy like mine, then didn’t see her for a couple of months and when she came back she had had a tummy tuck. The scar looked so invasive and so painful. No sign of her stretchmarks now though.

My first two births were natural, the third was c-sect. I think the saggy tummy is definitely worse post c-sect. I also had surgery this year, so you can see a few laparoscopy scars on my stomach. The big red line is because its hot and my panties were folded over and made a line on my tummy!

Your project is so fascinating. After I read all the stories I went and looked through all our photos. It made me cry. I loved being pregnant and I wanted to have a bigger family, but we have our two boys and I guess that’s more than a lot of people have.

About 38 weeks pregnant.

Four years post partum

J at 8 months with me and S.

J and me at 8 months old.

38 weeks pregnant during third pregnancy

I’m not a mom, but…

When I first came to your site I was thrown for a loop.

I was looking at bellies of women who had children, but a lot of these stomachs looked like my tummy when I weighed almost 200lbs. I now weight some where in the low 120s and a lot of these tummies still look like mine.

And, I know, you’re thinking, “Okay? What do you want?”

I wanted to say thanks. I wanted to say that even though your site deals with pregnant women and their bodies, it has some how morphed and has help me accept my body.

You see, when I was at my worse I had stretch marks on my upper tummy (yay for gentics and having both sides of my families having extra large women! The women in my family are just big girls.) and lower tummy. Back, thighs, and upper arms. They were what made me lose the weight in the first place. I figured when I lost the weight the stretch marks would vanish. But no.

And I must put emphasis on the fact that I did not lose weight the healthy normal way either. My weight lost consisted of anorexic habits and tendencies. I’m getting better though. Prevention and intervention through the loving extra large women in my family has changed my life 110% percent.

And through all of this the stretch marks were there. They faded though. They moved around on my body because my body changed so much. The ones on my back are now on my sides, the ones that were higher on my lower tummy are so low that they touch my pelvic bone. The ones on my upper arm can be seen when I turn my arm just the right way, which happens a lot cause a few people have asked about them.

So when I found your site I was amazed because I havent seen anybody’s body beyond what I was used to seeing through my psychological problems and all the searches I did to find that perfection. It made me feel better. It made me look at my body and go “Okay, this is okay. This is good. I’m okay.. slightly..” The conundrum hit when I realize that pregnancy was a major part in the lives of everybody on this site.

Then I get over it very quickly cause for the first time in a long, long time I’m okay with my body. I honestly say that and you have no idea how nice it is. Hating my body became a way of life for me and here I am saying how I’m okay with it because I’m not alone!

That in and of itself is the best thing ever. So thank you so much.

This isn’t exactly on topic, but it deals with what brings many of us here to this site anyway. There is some sexual material in this video.

Thanks to Navelgazing Midwife for the link!

Im 27 years old and the mom of a beautiful 17 month old girl.

Ive never had a very good body image, and have always been particularly unhappy with my belly. A few years before I got pregnant, I completely changed my eating and exercising habits, and lost about 30-35 pounds over the course of 2 years, bringing me down to my pre-pregnancy weight of 172, not a bad weight for my 5’9″ frame.

I got pregnant very quickly once we started trying, but had a difficult pregnancy; I was in a lot of discomfort and pain most of the time. Here is one of the rare pictures of me during my pregnancy, at about 38 weeks:

A few days after this picture was taken, I was admitted to the hospital for toxemia. After ten days of bed rest and several failed attempts to induce labor, I delivered a healthy and beautiful 8lb girl via c-section. I had gained over sixty pounds.

Its been frustrating that my body has been so slow to recover, especially since I had worked so hard to lose weight before. A month or two ago, I saw an article in Parents magazine about a woman who had a tummy tuck because a year or so after giving birth to twins, her belly was still flabby and ugly. The article showed pictures of her tummy before the procedure. When I saw them, I cried. Id been trying to hold back the negative body image thoughts, telling myself I was just taking extra time to lose the baby weight. But these before pictures of the ugly, flabby belly didnt look so foreign to me; they looked a lot like my belly. Maybe there really was something wrong with me.

When I saw the pictures on this web site, I cried again, this time out of relief. I was right the first time. My body is slowly recovering, and this is part of what it means to be a mom. So here I am today, 17 months postpartum, and about 15 pounds (and two pant sizes) from my pre-pregnancy weight.

Im still frustrated that I havent made more progress, and Im frustrated with my body because, while I was blessed to conceive easily, Ive had such a difficult time being pregnant, delivering, and recovering physically and emotionally from pregnancy. But now this is part of that healing too. This is the most liberating thing I think Ive ever done. Thank you so, so much for this space to share my belly and my story.

Mama D is a Super Mom and a Super Woman!

Susan takes a stand!

20 years ago, my belly held a 6 pound baby and I had gained 90 pounds during the pregnancy. At 36 weeks of pregnancy, I measured 48 centimeters; an enormous amount of fluid stretched me so that it looked like a bear gashed its claws across my stomach and hips. You can barely see the silvery lines, but they are all still there. I only got the stomach flap in the last year when I became disabled for awhile and gained 50 pounds. I am on my way back down and think the flap will also go away, or at least shrink.

I haven’t had the same vanity issues other women have and can walk around naked without a problem. Gaining weight, however, has brought a new appreciation for women’s image concerns. Fat on others has never bothered me. Fat on myself, I want gone. The skin is always here to stay.

Not seeing many fat women on your site, I felt it was important to add some photos of a fat woman. This belly housed three children, from almost 9 pounds to 10.5 pounds – the last child is now 20 years old. I’ve also had a gastric bypass and initially lost 200 pounds, so my skin is very stretched from that as well. All stretch marks came during pregnancy (except a few on my hips that came with puberty) and the sagging pannus has always been there – since my mid-teens.

I write as if it doesn’t pain me to see how much flesh I own, but it does. This site is helping me feel some better, but we need to see a lot more fat here. C’mon women… show some flesh!

I have always had a poor body image and struggled with yo yo weight. It took us 10 months to conceived this baby which I know isn’t very long, but when you’re going through it it feels like a lifetime. I was convinced that I would never get pregnant, so when it did happen is was such a shock and I don’t think it has even sunk in now that I’m 19 weeks. Part of me still thinks this is just fat, I can’t really believe there is a baby in there!

This website has really helped me see the beauty of my body, this body that is carrying my child and nurturing this tiny life. I can’t wait to have this baby and be a mummy, but part of me is still scared of how much my body might change and that one day I might look in the mirror and not recognise myself.

Already my body has changed, my already large breasts have turned into barrage balloons, covered with blue veins! My belly is growing and I fear that the stretch marks I received during puberty will increase! I guess only time will tell, and I hope when I look in the mirror in 6 months time I will be able to see the beauty of my body.

This is me at about 14 weeks.

And this was last night at 19 weeks + 3 days.

I am 24 years old. I have 2 beautiful children, that left me with a not so beautiful body. My daughter will be 2 in 8/06 and my son was born 3/06. So 2 children in under 2 years, gave me not much time to “snap back” in between. After looking at this site, I really don’t feel as badly about my body and I once did. My pregnancy with my daughter I didn’t get many stretch marks, my son was another story though. My daughter graced us with her presence after 41 weeks of pregnancy, my son had to be helped into this world, I was induced for him at 42 weeks pregnant. With my daughter I gained within the recommended weight range and dropped 15lbs of that just by giving birth. With my son I was up to 206lbs, 4 days before delivery. I was so embarrassed of “gaining too much” and “being too big” that I do not have any pictures of me pregnant with my son. I regret that and probably will for a very long time.

Here I am at 26 weeks my 1st pregnancy…This is my favorite belly picture…just the beginning of a little bump.

38 weeks…

and now almost 4 months postpartum from number 2