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I spent £280 on stretch mark creams.None of them worked. 10:34pm, four months postpartum, sitting on the bathroom floor holding an empty tube of cream, crying. I'd been smearing it on twice a day for four months and absolutely nothing had changed. The marks running from my hip bones to my thighs were the same angry pink-purple they'd been since week 32 of pregnancy. A few nights later, baby asleep on my chest at 2am, I read a comment from a dermatology nurse on a postpartum forum that explained, in one sentence, why none of the £280 worth of creams I'd bought had ever stood a chance. She said stretch marks live three layers below where any cream can reach. 469 mums had agreed underneath her comment. I had to look up what the dermis was. My sister, who'd had her second baby a year before me, told me what had actually worked for her. It wasn't a cream. It worked on the layer the nurse had been talking about. The one nothing topical can reach. Eleven weeks in. The colour has softened. The texture has changed. I haven't touched a cream in months.