Well into my 23rd week of pregnancy, all of the symptoms normally experienced late in pregnancy are creeping up on me.
With the baby belly becoming more and more firm as each day goes by, I finally experienced my first pregnancy related stretch marks. Now I'm no stranger to those little red lines, as puberty attacked me well back in my teens. I seemingly went from no curves to having hips overnight so for a long time my hip area looked as though I was clawed by a bear. Fast forward a few years down the road and all those red lines faded into little silver ones that are barely noticeable, so I'm not entirely worried about the pregnancy related ones because there isn't really any way to avoid them.
After hearing all the commercials and other pregnant women rave about certain creams that help avoid stretch marks, I mentioned it to my OB and once again, did my own research online. At the end of the day the only way you can avoid getting stretch marks is if your mother didn't get stretch marks and her mother didn't get stretch marks.... moral of my story is, I'm getting stretch marks whether I rub every lotion in the world on me or not. I'm just going to think of them as a badge of honour to this remarkable journey my body is taking, and besides, they'll fade eventually anyways.
