The popular maternity photo session of a mother with stretch marks encourages body confidence.

Pregnancy brings a lot of changes to your body, and while those changes are beautiful, they can also be difficult to accept at times. Learning to love your body before and after delivery isn’t always easy, but one mom is sharing photos from her maternity shoot in an effort to encourage moms everywhere.

Mom Christina AƄiola shared the images of her session on Instagram. The photos show AƄiola, who continued to postpone the session at 38 weeks pregnant, posing with her husband.

“Insecurity is a dangerous thing. I think it prevents us from developing our full potential. When it came to taking my maternity photos, I was very scared. So afraid of delaying it until 38 weeks of pregnancy!” she wrote in the title of the publication. “I have been struggling to accept my marks because I felt like I was the only one who had experienced such an extreme amount. All of me was covered and I felt that I was doing something wrong. [Now] I like to call my marks beauty marks! Because my marks represent the beautiful life that I brought to the world! Honestly, I would do it all over again for her.”

Initially, AƄiola wanted her stretch marks removed from the images. But when he finally did the shoot, his photographer told him that editing the stretch marks on the photos would be impossible. So what did she AƄiola do? She put aside her shyness and shared photos of herself shortly after giving birth to her daughter on October 24.

“I wanted to do a maternity shoot, but I felt insecure because I was getting all these stretch marks, and I’ve never had stretch marks before,” AƄiola told TODAY Parents. “I just kept delaying.”

The photos represent a message to moms around the world, some of whom may be struggling to love their own postpartum bodies, and have now gone viral, with women leaving hundreds of loving and supportive comments. “Honey, your stretch marks are beautiful. I saw these photos and the first thing I thought was: “They are beautiful. Never be ashamed,” wrote one person, while another said: “I have them too. For all my ʋbelly. And while I don’t feel ugly or unworthy, I do feel different, and I’m not totally in love with my postpartum tummy. Thanks for sharing this. It is helping me to re-educate my mind”.