While celebrities have the money and means to make their every day life grand, it's hard to mask the paunchy cheeks, swollen ankles, and big bellies that accompany pregnancy. "Hey, She looks a little like me!" You exclaim after seeing a paparazzi shot of a pregnant star, and for a brief moment feel a bit better about the forty-pound "baby nest" you've been building in your belly. And then there are the pictures of the stars who have piled on the pounds preparing for their offspring. With those photos, you sit up, smile wide, and realize that pregnancy is one of life's few great equalizers.

Back in 2015, Kim Kardashian tweeted the following: “Ok I’m 52lbs up today…..and I still have 6 weeks to go! I got my work cut out for me!!!!” Yes, Kim, the struggle is real. We’re not sure Kim’s poundage came from indulging in too many treats like Pink admitted to in Cosmopolitan Magazine. ““Hell yeah, I gained 55 pounds,” Pink said. “I think my baby may be part cheesecake.” And still others, like Molly Sims, gained an excess amount of weight due to an undiagnosed thyroid problem.

However the weight came on, if it really was just “a big baby” or if cookies were the real culprit, Drew Barrymore had the right approach to getting back in shape. “It took me nine months to have ‘em, I don’t care how long it takes me to get it off.” Amen, Drew.

Being a pregnant celebrity,  hounded by paparazzi  cannot be enjoyable (especially when your bump has become a beach ball, and your hanging jowls make you bear more resemblance to your 85-year-old Great Aunt Martha than a famous model). But, I think many of us can admit to a certain amount of schadenfreude that comes from looking at those photos. There is great satisfaction in knowing that even if it's for only nine months, certain pregnant celebrities do look just like us.

15 Kim Kardashian

Kardashian bulked up with both North and Saint's pregnancies. Specifically, she gained around 52 pounds with North, and 60 pounds with Saint. Before she got pregnant with Saint, the 5’3 Kardashian claims she weighed 130 pounds (hmm…I’m 5’3 and 130 pounds with no boobs or a butt, making me question the veracity of those pre-pregnancy weight claims, but I digress).  After Saint's birth, Kardashian was told not to get pregnant again, due to a dangerous, and potentially fatal condition called placenta accrete. Kardashian and Kanye West are reportedly planning a third child, and are engaging in talks with a surrogate.

14 Kendra Wilkinson

The smoking hot former Playboy Playmate and friend of Hugh Hefner's gained a substantial amount of weight with both of her pregnancies. She added 60 pounds to her pre-pregnancy 105 lb. frame while carrying son Hank in 2009 and 55 pounds with  daughter Alijah. Her battle to lose the poundage was documented in her reality show, “Kendra”. "My pregnancy was a free for all. I had no boundaries. I just ate, ate, ate.”

After obsessively working out and monitoring everything that passed her lips, Wilkinson struggled to lose the weight and sunk into a depression. “I don’t feel pretty anymore. I just feel so ugly,” Wilkinson said in one episode. Only after she stopped the harsh monitoring did the model see results with her weight loss. After two children, she now weighs 120 pounds, and is satisfied with how she looks. “I stopped obsessing,” she said, “I started to look good and feel good.”

13 Pink

The “Just Give Me a Reason” singer feels she has no reason to ever explain any weight gain to fans and critics. Four year after Pink delivered daughter Willow Sage, during a pregnancy in which she gained 55 pounds, she attended a cancer gala and received negative press for how she looked. “While I admit that the dress didn’t photograph as well as it did in my kitchen, I will also admit that I felt very pretty. In fact, I feel beautiful, “ Pink said on Twitter. She went on to sign the post, “I am perfectly fine…and my crazy strong body is having some much-deserved time off..."

This past December, Pink gave birth to a son and six weeks after his birth started working out again. In her Instagram post, Pink poses with her trainer and says, “Week 6 post baby and I haven’t lost ANY WEIGHT YET!!!!! Yay me!!!!!I’m normal”

You GO, Girl!

12 Kate Hudson

The sunny, golden girl actress and creator of fitness clothing site, Fabletics, has long been associated for her good looks and thin frame. Perhaps that’s why it’s so incongruous that the actress gained gained 70 pounds while pregnant with her first child, Ryder, in 2003. “I wold be eating ice cream, and my mother (actress Goldie Hawn) would literally pry the spoon from my hand and say, “You’ve had enough to last a lifetime.” Hudson had a second son, Bingham, in 2011, and six weeks after his birth was spotted looking beautiful; she had a luscious little tiny belly (ya know, the kind I have when I am in shape) and gorgeous curves while vacationing in the French Riviera. “There is nothing wrong with putting on a lot of weight during pregnancy," Hudson remarked.

11 Mariah Carey

The diva songstress gained 70 pounds while pregnant with twins Monroe and Moroccan, and the internet blew up. “If they want to rag at me for looking like a huge boat, like that wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t help it. Carrying two human lives inside me and doing the best I could. What am I going to do?” Carey told Good Morning America’s Lara Spencer.

Within six months of the twins birth, Carey dropped 70 pounds! She claims the first forty pounds were water weight that she shed in one short week, and the rest of the weight was lost following a strict diet and exercise.

10 Hayden Panettiere

Back in 2015, The 5’2 Nashville star gained 40 pounds while pregnant with daughter Kaya and people everywhere raised their eyebrows? Really, people took notice of a forty-pound pregnancy?  I shudder to think what my neighbors were whispering about me. After the actress delivered the baby, she struggled with postpartum depression and twice sought treatment for the condition.

She was very candid about her postpartum struggles and even hit back at shammers saying, "I'm 26. I'm a mom. I don't need to be afraid of what people are going to think."

She went on, "If you think for one second that a mother wants to feel that way toward her child, you're outta your mind. It is one of the debilitating, scary, guilty feelings that you can ever feel."

'I'm 26. I'm a mom. I don't need to be afraid of what people are going to think.''If you think for one second that a mother wants to feel that way toward her child, you’re outta your mind. It is one of the most debilitating, scary, guilty feelings that you can ever feel.

9 Melissa Joan Hart

The Sabrina the Teenage Witch actress is married to musician Mark Wilkerson and has three sons. With each pregnancy the actress admits to gaining between 55 and 60 pounds. After her second son, Braydon, was born, bloggers and press splashed images of her with her post-baby figure online.

“For my 33rd birthday, I wanted to get in shape,” Hart said back in 2009, losing 42 pounds. In September 2012, Hart gave birth to her third child, and again slimmed down. But the press still wouldn’t leave her alone.

Five months after another 40-pound weigh loss, a camera crew ambushed her as a locksmith worked on her car, and had the nerve to say she had gained the weight back. I for one appreciate the way she looks in the shot--she wears sweatpants, has messy hair, and is holding her child's baby doll in her hand. She looks..I don't know...normal? Yes, normal.

8 Jenny McCarthy

From the oldies but goodies pregnancy weight gain file comes Jenny McCarthy. McCarthy rose to fame in the 1990s after being Playmate of the Month for Playboy magazine in 1993, and two years later becoming the cohost of MTV’s dating game show, “Singled Out”.

I remember munching potato chips and absentmindedly staring at the screen while McCarthy pranced around the stage, her golden hair the only thing swishing off her deliciously taut body. Fast-forward to 2004, when McCarthy became pregnant with her son, Evan.

A few weeks before the birth, McCarthy posted a picture of her pregnant belly, where she admitted to gaining almost 100 pounds! Now, McCarthy makes 44 look smoking, but what has people burning up even more these days is not her fit physique, but her tough stance as an anti-vaccination advocate.

7 Molly Sims

American model Molly Sims rose to fame after appearances in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and for her role in the TV drama, “Las Vegas”. The willowy blonde, who has been open about her fertility struggles, is now the proud mom to three children: Brooks, Scarlett, and Grey.

While pregnant with Grey last year, Sims disclosed that she gained 85 pounds with her first pregnancy, but that it was only after she delivered him that she discovered she has an undiagnosed thyroid issue. It was only after the model received a proper diagnosis and started taking medication did she lose the extra weight; important food for thought if you do notice an abnormally large weight gain during pregnancy that cannot be attributed to overeating, being pregnant with twins, or other, identifiable factors.

6 Jessica Alba

The actress and tremendously successful entrepreneur (co-founder of The Honest Company) is mom to daughters Honor Marie (9) and Haven Garner (5). Back in a 2010 interview, Alba was asked how much weight she gained during her first pregnancy. According to the interviewer, Alba paused for a very long time (perhaps because the question was rude and out-of-line?) and then thoughtfully, and truthfully answered, “…actually, over 55 pounds. I stopped counting at eight months because I got too depressed. I was like ‘whatever! I’ll deal with it after I have the baby!” No word on how and when she lost the weight, and I don’t think it really matters. The brunette stunner, worth a reported $340 million, is regularly photographed with supportive husband Cash Warren and her two adorable girls by her side. Alba is indeed, sitting pretty.

5 Milla Jovovich

Dubbed the “reigning king of kick-butt” by VH1 in 2006, the model, musician, and frequent star of science fiction and action movies had a startling revelation regarding pregnancy weigh gain. During her first pregnancy, with daughter Ever Gabo, in 2007, Jovovich ate “like a giant” and gained 75 pounds. When she became pregnant with her second daughter, Dashiel Edan, in 2014, Jovovich approached things differently. “ I definitely tried to watch what I ate...I found myself at the 30lb maximum around New Years and I still had three more months to go before the baby would be born.” For the third trimester, the actress started walking more and keeping a food journal. Part of Jovovich’s interest in keeping her weight gain to a healthy normal was due to her scheduled  role in the “Resident Evil” franchise, four months after Dash was born. Posters of the 2016 film display a a sexy, kick-butt Jovovich. Her plan must have worked.

4 Amber Rose

Model Amber Rose is direct about her baby weight. “I was 202 pounds when I had my son, but I’m tall so it didn’t look like it, “ She said. The 5’9 model, who gained national attention after appearing in Young Jeezy and Kanye West’s 2008 video, “Put On”, went on to pose for Louis Vuitton and walk the catwalk for New York Fashion Week. The mom to Sebastian, and ex-wife of Wiz Khalifa has since shed her pregnancy weight. “It’s hard to get off the baby weight. It’s a different kind of weight because for months you stretch your stomach out and then it’s hard to get that back." I think it’s safe to say she got it back. Last year Rose took at turn as a contestant on “Dancing with the Stars” and was one voluptuous, hot fox while dancing the fox trot .

3 Leah Remini

King of Queens star, (and more recently, dissenter and critic of Scientology) Leah Remini, gained 80 pounds while pregnant with daughter Sofia in 2004. Remini admits to eating with abandon during her pregnancy, indulging in three boxes of mac and cheese at a time, and French fries and hamburgers.

She even poised a question about her breakneck eating to Keven James, co-star of King of Queens, “It’s not bad, right?” The actress said James would just laugh and told her she "looked good", only later telling her that he couldn’t stop laughing at how big she was. "No one wanted to talk about how I actually did lose the weight, just that I got fat,” she told People magazine.  “When you have a baby and you are not blessed with a metabolism that you can get back into your jeans the very next day, it becomes something to focus on," Remini added.

After finding a customized diet plan called 1st Personal Diet, and making a commitment to exercise,  Remini lost the weight, and thirteen years later, looks fitter, stronger, and happier than ever.

2 Beyoncé

Back in January, 2012, Queen Bee gave birth to Blue Ivy. At the time of the birth, Beyoncé admitted to weighing in at nearly 200 pounds, gaining about 57 pounds while pregnant. Immediately after the birth, she wasted not a moment, and worked incredibly hard to lose 65 pounds, voicing her concerns in a documentary, “Self Titled Part 4: Liberation". “I wanted to show that you can have a child and you can work hard and you can get your body back.” More recently, the singer gained a mere three pounds more than her first pregnancy, and this time around she was expecting twins! The babies were born on June 17, and are named Rumi, and Sir.  Now if only the internet could get off the couple’s case for their choice of baby names.

1 Jessica Simpson

Jessica Simpson--singer, fashion mogul, and famous utterer of the line, “Is ‘Chicken of the Sea chicken, or tuna?”  The beautiful, curvy bombshell is mom to daughter Maxwell and son, Ace. In 2012, Simpson gained 70 pounds when pregnant with her daughter, and was endlessly shamed, particularly by the media which seemed to delight in playing an endless loop of the  2005 movie “The Dukes of Hazard”,  which showcases Simpson's signature cleavage, and tight gams tucked into tiny Daisy Duke shorts. Ah...Hello? We all age, and women do gain weight while pregnant. During the pregnancy, Simpson admitted she was “constantly hungry” and had a “big appetite”. While expecting son Ace, Simpson didn’t gain as much weight as the first time around, and joked to Ellen DeGeneres that her “snack of choice” for the pregnancy wasn’t chicken, or tuna, but Tums antacid.

Sources: USA Today, NY Post, Self, Daily Mail