Every person is different as to how much weight you will gain during pregnancy, you body will compensate for what your baby needs. Generally if you are small whenyou get pregnant you will put on a bit of weight and if you are bigger you will already have fat stores for your baby to live on and may not put on much weight at all. As for stretch marks a lot of that is about how elastic your skin is, if you are prone to stretch mark unfortunately there isn't much you can do.

With DD I was slightly overweight - about 5kgs - and all up only put on 6kgs in total. I weighed less leaving hospital than before I was pregnant and I have very few stretch marks appear, mainly near my hips and this was in the last week of my pregnancy. I seem to have a tendancy to carry all to the front so I thought I did well with the limited amount of stretch marks I got.

This time around, I weighed about the same pre pregnancy as I did with DD and so far I have put on 6kg's and I am 24 weeks, although as I am having twins and my growth is currently on par with a 38 week singleton pregnancy I'm happy with the gain. From all our scans our babies are growing and are healthy and I can probably expect to put on another 6 or so kg's before they arrive. So far to date I have had no additional stretch marks appear and my tummy is expanding at an unnatural rate so I'm amazed my skin is coping so well.

You will probably find that after the baby is born, even if you go back to your pre pregnancy weight that your body shape has changed due to having a baby. Generally the hip and boob area are the most noticeable..