Love thy pregnant body

I've mentioned before that stretch marks have NOT been my best friend during the past 6 weeks or so. In fact I don't know if I'm ashamed to admit that I've cried about these more times than I care to remember. I knew I was going to get them as I already have a collection of them of my thighs, hips and boobs from puberty and my skin is not made of stretchy stuff. Did that make it any easier when I first noticed them? Nope.

The thing to understand is that I don't hate them because of what they signify, my skin is stretching to accommodate my son, I love them for this. I hate them because they're forever, they're now here to stay with me for the rest of my waking days and there's very little I can do about it. Yes they will fade like me others, but my pre-pregnancy body is now gone, completely. As a woman who loves nothing more than throwing on a bikini and sitting on the sun these new lines take some getting used to. My current fear is never having the confidence to go to the beach with my son and splash in the sea without feeling too self conscious, I don't want to spend the rest of my life feeling unattractive and I certainly don't want to spend a majority of it too ashamed to be naked in front of my own husband due to my crepe like tummy...

So in order to try and learn to love my lines I'm going to stop ignoring them and try to learn to love (!) them. Which will include taking weekly photographs of my tummy to see how they've progressed, in the hope that one day I'll look back on them and actually feel proud. I'm not saying im going to post these photos on my blog, but to jump in feet first I decided the first 'stretch mark diary' should debut on here...