My Relationship With Stretch Marks

When I was eight months pregnant I sat in front of the mirror with my belly poking what felt like a metre in front of me and cried.

Purple lines like veins on a hairless cat had started to appear on the side of my hips, across my belly button and along each side or my stomach.

Stretch marks.

It was like someone had just started playing those dreaded theme tabs from the Jaws movie; Dan Da Daaannnnn.

I sobbed.

For months, I had been coating my body with oil like a butcher lathering a pig ready for the spit. I was relentless; even refusing to take hot showers or baths that could dry out my skin.

I knew stretch marks would be inevitable. I am a small person, my tiniest feature being my belly. I have never been one to hold fat there it was always reserved for my butt. I had, without sounding like a total nit, a washboard stomach.

As the month dragged on, my little purple lines transformed from veins to capillaries, opening up from every direction to what looked like a maze across my swollen belly. It was as if a four-year-old had gone to town with a crayon across my stomach, doodling like a mad man with a purple marker.

I told myself to embrace the stretching because my child needed more room. He was growing at  a rapid pace for such a small human, even the midwives would gasp at the size of me. “Honey, you’re like a little planet”, and “You’re as tight as a drum dear, you might pop”.

They would “hehe” and I would smile but on the inside, I wanted to take their doppler and bop them over the head for being so insensitive.

At 40 weeks and 11 hours, my son was born. He was bloody beautiful and I did not give two hoots about my stomach. In fact, I didn’t think twice about it until my son was about four-months-old and it was time to start getting my health back in shape.

For any mother, you know this is a must but it’s a bloody hard slog.

For me, it was extra hard. I had a sagged stomach and a belly covered in scars to contend with. It was not pretty. Nope, it was downright ugly.

For all of you now calling me a shallow tit, sit back and relax. Any woman worth her salt has had body issues; I am just brave enough to fill you in on mine.

So here goes; this is what I really think about my stretch marks.

I hate them. I hate them. I hate them. They are ugly.

I feel ugly when I look at them. I feel ugly when my husband touches them. I feel so ugly and I will never wear a two-piece bikini again, nor will I ever wear something tight around my waist.

I love my son so much I would not change them for the world.

And that’s the truth.

As much as I hate my stretch marks, they helped create the incredible human now asleep next to me. What a freakin’ amazing thing my body did. I grew a human and he is perfect.

It took me a long time to accept my stretch marks. Many tears were shed for I longed to have my two-year-ago body back. But now I know, something greater was meant for my hips to rest a child upon them.

Slowly, slowly they have started to fade to white; some you can barely see. I am starting to feel sexy again; I have embraced them and damn, it feels good.

The turning point for me was reading a little message my husband had scribbled in my first Mother’s Day card. It read:

“A scar is a tattoo of triumph to be proud of. Don’t allow your scars to hold you hostage. Don’t allow them to make you live your life in fear. You can’t make the scars in your life disappear, but you can change the way you see them. You can start seeing your scars as a sign of strength and not pain.”

It was a welcome reminder of the important things. My scars are not one of them.

One of my favourite quotes is this, “The wound is the place where the light enters you.” – Rumi.

I now see that from scars have emerged the strongest souls; the most powerful characters in this great world are seared with scars.

See your scars as a sign of “YES! I DID THIS” I grew a beautiful child and I have my scars to prove it; and now I have a chance to grow even stronger.