01 May 23-Year-Old Mom-Of-Four Proudly Shows Off Her Stretch Marks After Being Body-Shamed

Having a child for the first time is never easy – I mean, the work that goes into ensuring kids are consistently happy and healthy can be pretty overwhelming for any parent. Yes, it’s a cliché, but it really does take a village to raise a child, and needless to say, it’s much harder for parents who have more than one child.

Check out Buzzfeed’s take on what your first month as a parent might look like:

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Now, imagine being just 23 years old, and suddenly having four infants to look after, without any kind of prior experience raising a family. Well, that’s exactly the case for Doreen Ching – at the age of 23, she gave birth to quadruplets, and it changed absolutely everything about her life.

One thing that she found particularly difficult to deal with was the physical change to her body that occurred during the pregnancy and following the birth of her four babies.

The young mother-of-four has made the brave decision to proudly show off her stretch marks after accepting that her body would never look how it looked before.

Ching never expected her candid photograph to receive the reaction that it did.

The snap accumulated more than 12,000 shares and 23,000 likes. And while Ching got an outpouring of love from people all over the world, she unfortunately also received many unjustifiably hateful comments.

Trolls have even slammed the Malaysian mother for having “so many” children, going as far as to say that her stretch marks are her own fault.

In the photo, Ching, who is from Johor Province in Malaysia, bares one side of her torso, showing off her very visible stretch marks.

It took a whole two years after giving birth to her four quadruplets before Ching finally came to terms with her the appearance of her stomach.

Now aged two, her children, Jensen, Jayden, Jasper, and Jazreel are the light of her life, however, their births led her to feel a deep sense of discomfort in her own skin.

These days, Ching says she had learned to accept her body exactly how it is and no longer pines for her pre-pregnancy body.

In a very moving post, she talks about her pregnancy and that a friend told her that her body would be “ruined” as a result of having children.

She also embraced the fact that there is “no amount of surgery or money” which would be able to give her back her old body.

Ching tagged her husband, Toh Yang Ming in the post writing: “Give me back my stomach!”

Ching captioned the emotional post: “Only 21 at the time, I wondered how I would be able to accept my stomach looking like this for the rest of my life. The first thing I did after leaving the delivery room was to look at my stomach and cry.”

Two years after becoming a mother to three boys and one girl, she had no qualms about sharing the snap on online, despite the fact that the internet has notoriously not been the most accepting place for people with body insecurities.

The bold, young mother even shared a photo of herself in a bikini, writing: “My stomach doesn’t matter. “I can still wear a bikini at home. I can only be as perfect as I can be.”

Because the post garnered such a mixed reaction, Ching felt the need to make a follow-up post. She wrote: “Many told me I looked ugly and disgusting, and that they wanted to vomit. Some men said it was all the women’s fault for wanting to have so many kids. Please respect the women of this world, such as your mother and your wife, who manage childbirth and still work.”

Doreen Ching is an incredibly inspirational woman for sharing a photograph which shows off what was once a deep insecurity of hers. Hopefully, she will inspire the many other women who have gone through similar experiences.

We wish Doreen Ching and her family all the best for their future and hope she continues to grow in confidence.

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