Mom's Side-By-Side Bump Photos Prove All Pregnancies Are Different

No two pregnancies are the same — even when they are your own

Bodies change from one pregnancy to the next. It’s often difficult to rationalize from one child to another all the differences we can go through. It’s not often a person can perfectly capture just how difficult it can be to accept our ever-changing bodies, but one mom did just that.

Laura Mazza, who writes at Mum on the Run, was frustrated with how she defined a “normal” pregnancy belly. She shared two photos from her pregnancies – one at 14 weeks and the other when she “showed” much earlier. “I thought I was huge. HUGE,” Mazza wrote. “I was embarrassed at how bloated I looked. I spent time hiding my stomach even though people knew I was pregnant.”

Mazza said she felt embarrassed at the public event and “even wore Spanx to a wedding because she felt like she didn’t look like herself.” She, like many women, felt the need to look “pregnant” before announcing that she was having another child.

“I wanted to get to the right size before I celebrated my bump, Mazza wrote.”

Most women struggle with body image at some point in our lives — never more so than when we get pregnant and have children. Our pregnancy and postpartum bodies can be a source of frustration as we come to the realization that in some cases they will never look like they did before we had children. It is not easy.

Mazza also calls out people who worry about their own bodies or feel comfortable commenting on other women’s bodies. “I see it all the time, women who think their bumps are too small or too big. Who have people constantly commenting on their pregnant bodies,” she said. “Constantly saying ‘you’re sooooooo tiny!’ Or ‘you’re soooo huge!’ like it’s okay to comment and a growing baby makes it free for all.”

The mom of three said she was questioned with her second pregnancy if she was having twins. “Yeah for 9 months that second baby has been hiding Wendy, ya twat…no it’s not twins, but thanks for helping me feel positive about my body at such a vulnerable and hormonal time.”

This just may be the best comeback to a ridiculously intimate question, ever.

The second shot is of Mazza now, pregnant with her third child. And though she is now “double the size” she was with her first, she finally feels comfortable with her body.

“I didn’t lose the baby weight after the first kid, nor the second, and after this kid I won’t rush to lose the weight after this one either,” she wrote. “The baby is a size of a pea, and in there’s some noodles, some banana lollies and about a kilo of watermelon… doesn’t look like a bump should at 9 weeks, but I don’t care.”

Nor should she.

Mazza said she’s not size zero and it doesn’t matter if she were: “I’m a perfect mother to my children and future children,” she concluded. “I am happy, my children are happy and to me that is all that matters in life.”