Why I’m Learning To Love My Stretchmarks

We’ve all heard the emotional, heartfelt reasons women use to try and justify not hating our stretchmarks. My body housed my baby and that makes it beautiful and so on and so forth in that fashion. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve tried to take all of that soppy stuff on board and kudos to any woman who can truly see past them and only feel love. At the end of the day I still don’t like them, they still glare at me from the mirror and I haven’t even considered a bikini since having my son, that would just be putting them on display. I can lie to people all I like but they still feel ugly and I wish they would go away. What choice do I have though, but to learn to accept and love a part of my new post-baby body that I can’t get rid of, no matter what pharmaceutical and beauty companies try to tell me.

Some women don’t get stretchmarks (yes I am secretly hating you all just a little), some of us only get a few and some of us get heaps. I fell somewhere between a few and heaps, they are fading as time passes but with baby number two somewhere in the not too distant future, I’m sure I will have plenty more soon enough.

Approximately 90% of women get stretchmarks while pregnant to some extent. They are depressed streaks in the skin that appear a pink, purple, red or brown colour depending on the tone of your skin. Lighter skin generally shows darker pink to red marks, darker skin tends to show marks lighter than the skin tone in browns and purples. They are most common on the belly during pregnancy as the skin stretches rapidly to accommodate the growing baby, but are also quite commonly found on the breasts, buttocks,hips and thighs.

Stretchmarks are caused by changes in the elastic supportive tissue that lies just beneath the skin. As the skin stretches so quickly in such a short time through the later months of pregnancy, these elastic fibres cannot keep up and they ‘break’. In the second and third trimester as your belly balloons you may get itchy skin on the areas that are stretching, generally the itchier the skin, the worse the marks will be, but not always.

The first few weeks after giving birth your stretchmarks can seem like they will never settle down. They may be so bright, noticeable and angry looking that you feel they will never fade, but 95% of women with stretchmarks say their marks have faded substantially in the two years post pregnancy. Of course subsequent pregnancies can result in more and more stretchmarks and it is a fact that the more times you go back the worse the end result will be on your skin.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of products out there that claim to prevent or remove stretchmarks and sadly for all the hope filled mummies out there this just isn’t true. There is no scientifically proven product anywhere that can guarantee to remove stretchmarks. Many companies make outrageous promises of removing them in weeks or preventing them altogether, but the simple truth is if you are going to get them, nothing will stop them. Genetics plays a role too, so if your mum got them carrying you there is a high chance you will get them carrying your own children.

It is still a great idea to moisturise your belly during pregnancy and it is believed to reduce the severity of stretchmarks, as opposed to someone who never moisturises. Do not though, let yourself be fooled into buying expensive creams and lotions that make promises they can’t keep, it’s all just marketing.

Despite my not so positive feelings towards my own stretchmarks, I can still see them for what they really are, a sign that my body did something incredible and gave me something I can never replace. No, I don’t like looking at them and it still makes me a little squeamish when my husband tells me he loves them and doesn’t care, but I would never change what I got as a result. In the whole scheme of things, a few ugly marks on my tummy in exchange for my beautiful little firecracker of a son, seem insignificant.

The proof that it really doesn’t matter in the long run is that we will go back and do it all again. Everything with the first baby is a surprise, quite often a scary surprise, but the fact that we go back again is a true display of how love conquers all. To hell with the stretchmarks, the pain, the fat ankles, the sore back, the chapped nipples and the exhaustion, all of that is short lived. The incredible little people we create are for life and I’m willing to gain a few more stretchmarks and a sore back for my babies any day.

How do you feel about your stretchmarks?