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I remember looking in the mirror one day at my round belly and thinking, "Where did my waistline go? And when did I get attacked by a bear?" Everyone knows about weight gain during pregnancy. What nobody tells you about is its evil sidekick, stretch marks. I like to joke that I started gaining weight before I even got pregnant. I never lost any weight, even in my first trimester. I never threw up, either, which could be a contributing factor to the "never losing weight" thing. No, I just ate. And ate. And ate some more. All my friends would tell me to "go ahead and eat" because I was "eating for two." What they didn't say was that all that weigh would still be there when the baby came out.

When my daughter (finally) decided to come out, I weighed nearly (okay, more than) two hundred pounds. I'm five foot one (and a half!). After three days, I casually looked in the mirror (one of the full length ones) expecting to see my nice, flat, pre-pregnancy stomach that I had when I was one hundred and thirty pounds. Instead, I saw this one hundred and seventy pound woman with a "Mommy Pouch." I cried for about five minutes, until my beautiful baby girl woke up. And then I cried harder. I was ugly! I stank! I hadn't had a shower in three (or four) days! How was my baby ever going to love me? And then, I picked her up, and started nursing her and none of it mattered.

Now, I like to joke that my daughter was ticking the weeks off that she spent in solitary confinement and they showed through and became stretch marks. I'm still not anywhere near the one hundred and thirty pounds that I was before I got pregnant, and I would like to apologize to my former self. I'm sorry for thinking you were fat, when in all reality you had a gorgeous body! I'm sorry for thinking that your stomach was ugly when, in all reality, it was beautiful. And you know what? It still is! I have a Mommy stomach. My stomach made life, and that's a miracle in itself. So you can keep your girdles and your stretch mark fading cream! Actually, can I have just a little bit of that cream? Just kidding. I'm proud of the weight that I gained, and the stretch marks I have, because I got a beautiful little girl out of it. In my book, that's more than a fair trade!

Now, that doesn't mean that I am not trying to lose weight. But what woman isn't? Even if I spend the rest of my life looking how I look right now, I am going to be fine with it. Men still find me attractive (for the most part) and even though there are some men that are superficial and don't talk to "big girls," I would rather not talk to them anyway. I don't want to date someone that shallow to begin with. No matter how much weight you gained, beauty really is about confidence.

Learn more about this author, Evelyn Chagarov.
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