When you ask this question, you need to realize one fact before you go any farther: for some pregnancies, you simply cannot prevent stretch marks. Around 50% of women get stretch marks due to pregnancy, no matter what they do to try to prevent them.

Just because stretch marks are likely doesn’t mean you shouldn’t attempt to keep them from appearing, however. While you might not be able to keep them away altogether, there are a few things you can do to reduce the risk of getting stretch marks, or at least their severity:

• Understand what causes them. Stretch marks come from – you guessed it – your skin stretching beyond its normal boundaries in a relatively quick period of time.
• Control the pace of your pregnancy weight gain. If possible, try to spread your weight gain out over your pregnancy. Obviously, you can’t control how fast your baby grows, but you can eat a healthy diet and talk with your doctor about the pace of your weight gain.
• Some herbal remedies can help. There are herbal mixtures made up of things like cocoa butter, Vitamin E, and chamomile that may, in some cases, help prevent your stretch marks. These remedies can, even if they don’t prevent stretch marks, help your body recover from them, and help them to be less visible to the eye over time.
• Moisturize. There are even moisturizing creams that are aimed specifically at helping with stretch marks. Often, they use some of the same herbal remedies mentioned above.
• Eat a balanced and healthy diet. This will help to keep your skin strong and healthy. Healthy skin is better able to stretch, expand, and contract. It won’t prevent them altogether, but it might help reduce the severity of your stretch marks.

None of these steps are guaranteed to keep you from getting stretch marks. Often, they just come with the territory of being pregnant. However, if you follow these tips, you do reduce your risk, and you will probably find that your own stretch marks aren’t nearly as severe as they might have otherwise wound up being.

This entry was posted in After Pregnancy.