If you're distressed to see stretch marks suddenly snaking their way across your pregnant belly, take solace in the fact that you are not alone. At least half of all expecting mothers get them.
Stretch marks, or striae, occur in the dermis, the elastic middle layer of your skin that allows it to retain its shape. The stretching of your skin during pregnancy causes the dermis to break down, leaving streaks or cracks known as stretch marks.
Whether you develop stretch marks or not depends on the extent to which your skin is stretched, how fast, and on good old genetics. In other words, you can control only so much of what goes on in your own dermis, so don't be surprised if your best efforts to prevent stretch marks still leave you flaunting the "love marks" of pregnancy.
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