My husband and I were high school sweethearts. The first time we met was in Biology class sophomore year; for me it was love at first sight. I thought that it was just a clich whenever I read in books that when you meet "the one" time will stop and you will only be aware of the beats of your heart; but in my case it did happen. When I first laid eyes on Patrick I knew that we were meant to be together; good thing that he felt exactly the same way.

When we started dating, we never parted and after college we immediately got married. We planned on starting a family right away but we only got pregnant after five years of marriage. So when we found out that I was on the family way, we were both ecstatic. We had a party and celebrated like crazy. We called our family and friend and we uttered a silent prayer of thanks.

I knew then that I was more than ready to have my first child. When my belly started to stretch I applied cocoa butter in my tummy, hips, thighs and butt to prevent stretch marks. Apart from preventing stretch marks my husband, as part of his involvement in the pregnancy massaged me with this miracle substance every night and it helped me to relax and it was a good stress reliever, just like a warm cup of hot chocolate.

I have known some friends who took this quite simple regimen for granted when they were pregnant and they are still sorry that they have to live with their ugly stretch marks. I guess it was also bad that their respective husbands weren't as supportive as mine during the whole ordeal; I can't even imagine being in their shoes. I would have cried the whole time; not only because of the stretch mark thing but more on the non-involvement of the husband part. I am just lucky that "the one" for me was also one of a kind.