Bio Oil – can it fix pregnancy stretch marks?

Reading time: 6 mins

I speak from painful experience on this one!

Twins!

I fell pregnant with twins 7 years ago.  I had this sneaking feeling that there was a fair chance my stomach was never going to look quite the same again once I’d come out ‘the other side’ and given birth.

And boy was I right!

Whale syndrome

Before pregnancy I’d never had what I’d call a flat stomach but it wasn’t particularly on the large side either.  But ‘large’ was a well used word by the time came to give birth.  ‘Whale’ was a word I used even more, although everyone else insisted I was being hard on myself.  Apparently for a twin mum I was quite trim – I felt sorry for other twin mums, although I never came across any.  I most felt like a whale when the time came that I was unable to turn over in bed or I’d pass out due to the pressure of ‘the bump’ on the viens in my back (I was guessing).  I’d have to work my way into a sitting position, heave myself off the bed (in hospital by this point), waddle round the other side of the bed and lower myself slowly into a horizontal position once again to rest – you couldn’t really call it sleep by that point.

Trying to get into a wheel chair to be pushed around the hospital was quite a feat too – once you’ve got a bump bigger than a basket ball in between your neck and waist there’s very little room left to bend to get in and out of chairs!

6 months gone and going strong

Anyway by 6 months pregnant, when I looked like I was due any moment for a singleton pregnancy, I was rather proud that I hadn’t got a single stretch mark.  I thought too soon.  Within a week or so a few had begun to appear around my belly button.  The effect after this, if you could record it happening, was rather like shattering glass in slow motion, except that some stretch marks were semi-circles going around my belly button and others were like the spokes of a bicycle radiating out from my belly button.  After a few weeks the ‘shattered glass’ effect was at it’s height, but it didn’t stop there.  By the time my gorgeous boys arrived the ‘marks’ had all blended into one.  I called it my ‘stretched patch’ as it was literally a round area of purple covering the front of my stomach.  The skin was so stretched it felt thin to the touch, all smooth and shiny.

After Birth

Soon after the boys had arrived and I was breast feeding them, I was very much aware of my womb contracting, which is natures way of helping you get your shape back.  So even though it was fairly painful (nothing like as bad as the original contractions though thankfully) it was kind of a good pain as you knew it was going in the right direction this time – smaller!

As I had time to study my stomach I realised that the skin really was terribly thin.  I suspect the ‘flesh’ itself had come apart underneath as you could pretty much see your intestines!  Pretty gross!

As time went by

After several months my stomach had become smaller but it was clearly badly damaged.  Antenatal physiotherapy classes taught me how to find my vertical stomach muscles and they were about 6 inches apart still!  I set about doing gentle exercises to rectify this and slowly but surely it worked.  I was really pleased but it didn’t do anything about my skin itself.

Bio Oil

Some time later I started seeing adverts on TV for Bio Oil.  It’s claims sounded great but I’m normally quite skeptical about those sort of things so didn’t take much notice.  I heard of other people who had self harmed and used it and found that it was really good.  I really thought that my skin was way too far gone to be able to do any noticeable good it to but eventually thought, other than money, what have I got to lose?

So I bought a small bottle for about £8 and tried it every day until it ran out.  I think it lasted about 3 months.  By the end of this time I couldn’t say for certain but wondered if I could see a tiny bit of an improvement.  So I bought another bottle but the bigger version.  I figured that if I did it for another 6 months and could see a definite improvement then I’d carry on and if not well at least I’d given it my best shot.  After 6 months I could definitely see a distinct improvement and so carried on for another couple of big bottles.  After several bottles and a couple of years I thought that perhaphs there wasn’t any more change happening by then so stopped.

In Conclusion

So overall it most definitely did make a marked improvement and I’d highly recommend it to anyone, even if the stretch marks are at least a year old as mine were.  It didn’t make them go away by any means, my stomach’s skin is still damaged but it’s not awful any more, it’s not purple lines now just silvery wrinkles, oh and no I’m not feeling brave enough to add a photo just yet

I’d be interested to hear your experiences in comments below.

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What Now?

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