I'm interested in this as well. My sister gave me the Burts Bees Mama Bee Shea Butter and Vitamin E. I used it for a few days and it gave me a weird rash all over my stomach. I'm looking for an alternative. My friend who is also pregnant said she has heard great things about bio oil.

I don't have experience with them, but please be careful what you use. I remember reading up on them after my son was born, and some of them are not recommended if you are nursing (I think Mederma and/or StriVectin). I don't know if there are any that are not recommended for use during pregnancy, either.

I've been using Palmer's Tummy Butter at night and Palmer's Massage Cream once or twice during the day. I use it to *hopefully* prevent getting stretch marks while pregnant though. A friend of mine has used both of these products to fade her pregnancy stretch marks and she said it worked well.

Me too. I love the Palmer's Cocoa Butter (both the tummy butter and massage cream). It smells delicious and is thick enough to prevent my skin from getting itchy!!

Palmers worked for me. I have one mark down my belly three weeks after having baby (which actually seems to be fading) and which I consider a success considering I have more on my thighs and arms from previous weight gain/loss.

I found that creams don't do anything to prevent or heal the stretch marks. Stretch marks are deep tears through many layers of skin and deep in the dermis and it's because of a lack of elastin and collagen. I only gained 25 lb with my first pregnancy but got huge stretch marks so the lower gain doesn't necessarily help.

Now for the good news, I found something that helps me. I also read that this can be done during pregnancy to bring more blood circulation, collagen and elastin production to where you need it most on the abdomen. I made a post outlining what I do a while ago here on myfitnesspal: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/801386-stretch-marks-actually-getting-better. You can see the pictures that I posted and how much the texture had changed in just a few weeks of treatment and currently the marks themselves are shrinking.

I use bio oil and rosehip oil and aloe Vera lotions only now that I am pregnant after the derma roller treatment and some of the stretch marks have gone from a width of 1 cm to about 3 mm currently. I have treated them for about 4 months now and they are healing much faster between treatments now that I am pregnant.. Maybe because of the increased blood volume that I have due to the pregnancy.

I hope this helps someone!

Even if stretch marks can't be prevented, you can alleviate the itchy belly that sometimes results from stretching and expanding skin. My belly started itching fiercely at around 20 weeks, but it has not since I began using twice daily a Vitamin E gel that my mom gave me.

I'm using Organic Coconut Oil (the kind you cook with -llisted here) http://www.henryhappened.com/5-beauty-uses-for-coconut-oil.html

Although research says its all up to genetics, there's no harm in trying to prevent them.

My mom and sister got loads of stretch marks, but my other sister who gained 70 lbs during pregnancy got zero........ So who knows??!!

Coconut oil has tons of great other uses too; dry scalp, deep conditioner, diaper rash, etc. I discovered it when I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism.

http://wellnessmama.com/5734/101-uses-for-coconut-oil/

I use Bio-Oil and generic brand Cocoa Butter Lotion. The Bio-Oil is normally $20 per bottle but I buy it at Costco for $20 for a large and a small bottle. At first it seemed to be helping but maybe that is because my belly hadn't grown enough yet because the past two weeks I've noticed considerably more stretch marks than I had previously and I'm still using it daily. Oh well! Guess it does have to do with genetics! Darn!