Hands up if you’re like almost every mum in Australia and you have stretch marks.
Well, you’re just like Abagail Wedlake, a new mum who’s taking one for the team and sharing her (beautiful) post-partum pictures on social media in a bid to normalise stretch marks.
Preach.
As reported by Refinery 29, since giving birth to her daughter, Aubrey, four months ago, Abagail has taken to Instagram to show the world that she has “earnt her stripes” and couldn’t be prouder of the skin she’s in.
And why shouldn’t she/all of us be?
“We give up our bodies to create our children, our bodies change and gain perfect imperfections that we should be celebrating not shaming,” she writes on of her posts.
“Women are amazingly powerful creatures – stop the body-shaming.”
One user applauded Abagail’s post, saying that it reminded her why she should love her own stretch marks.
“This is beautiful,” the user began. “I always hate my stretch marks but I always forget how I let my body go through this to let a human grow in me.”
“And it is a beautiful thing you can let your body do for such angels.”
Another says that Abagail’s post-birth body confidence has helped her deal with and overcome her own fear of what her body may look like after giving birth.
“I’m pregnant right now and at first I was super scared of stretch marks then I see all the body positive supportive girls like you and y’all reminded me that we are beautiful,” she wrote.
Others’ opinions aside, Abagail’s stretch-mark pride serves as a reminder that rather than beat ourselves up over the sometimes-inconvenient after-effects of childbirth, own them.
