‘Am I too insecure about my mother’s body?’

Madelon (37) is single and mother of Daan (11), Luuk (9) and Mink (7).

“Becoming a mother at twenty-six; I only saw the benefits in it at first. Enough energy to tackle the sleepless nights and run after stubborn toddlers. Still quite young at heart. But one thing nobody tells you in advance: that young skin stretches much less easily than a slightly older one. And so the stretch marks shot above my belly button after my thirtieth week of pregnancy.

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On the dating market

Anyway, I didn’t come out of my pregnancies completely unscathed. My breasts are more tea bags than the apples they once were. The stretch marks on my stomach are peanuts compared to the sludge underneath. My buttocks hang. And with that body I now enter the dating market.

“I feel incredibly unsexy.”

It makes me incredibly insecure. Because all those nice single men that I swipe to like on the dating apps and sites are much more comfortable in their own skin. Pretty easy if they didn’t bring a child into the world of their own, but what will they think of me? I feel incredibly unsexy. In frantic efforts to get something back from my pre-motherhood body, I’ve tried just about everything. lines. A personal trainer. Eat few carbohydrates and drink plenty of water. But my stomach remains the same blubber and my self-image a five-min.

“Don’t be fooled, Mads,” friends say. “The right man likes you for who you are, not for how your belly looks. Besides, you’ve made the most beautiful thing in the world, haven’t you?’ They are of course right. Am I really too insecure about my maternal body on the dating market? How do I deal with this?”

More episodes of the dilemma? Every Tuesday there is a new story on KekMama.nl. Read the previous dilemmas here.