How to Plan the Timing of Your Mommy Makeover Procedure

October 09, 2020

If you’ve had a baby recently, well first off, congratulations! Whether it’s your first, second, third, or fourth (?!), no matter the number, we know how special baby time can be.

It’s a funny time because it’s one where our emotions are all a jumble and as much as we want our little baby to stay a baby, we also can’t wait for them to grow up. And if this is not your first baby you know how fleeting this time is, but it’s also just so damn exhausting.

You want to enjoy every single second, but you can’t, because you’re not sleeping, and your breasts ache, and your baby keeps crying and you can’t figure out why, and you can’t get on the treadmill just yet, or take that run cause you might, you know, pee your pants or something (speaking from experience 🙋‍♀️). And sometimes when people say “enjoy this time, it’s so special,” you kind of want to scream at them and cry a little, or a lot.

All jokes aside, yes, it is a special time, but it’s ok to not love every single moment of it. And yes, as much as the baby time is brief, when you’re living it, it sometimes feels like it’s just going by in slow motion.

Because here’s the thing: you kind of want to get back to feeling like yourself again. You just spent nine months growing an entire human, and now you’re taking care of that human, but you’d like to get some of your own life back. For some women, it starts by really wanting to get our bodies back.

What is a Mommy Makeover?

We all know how hard it is to get our bodies back following pregnancy and childbirth. You’re exhausted, you need to take it easy for a while (except you kind of can’t because you’re taking care of a baby), but you also may have had a C-section, or a complication during delivery that has made recovery a little tougher and a little longer.

Whatever your particular circumstance there is definitely a bit of a transition period before you can hit the gym again. And then once you finally do, months might go by and you start to realize that no matter how hard you try to eat well and exercise there are some things you just can’t get back.

That’s where the mommy makeover comes in.

Any woman who has had a baby knows that her breasts, for instance, are never the same again. They are still beautiful, and you may be totally happy with them, but let’s be real: they change. Some are smaller, some are larger, and for many, breasts sag or become deflated-looking. Unfortunately no amount of healthy eating or exercise will make those breasts perky again. But the mommy makeover sure will.

And then of course there is the tummy, which took the brunt of the pregnancy, with skin stretching in ways you had no idea it could. On top of that, there are those stomach muscles; they were definitely put through the ringer during childbirth, to the point where, for a lot of moms, the muscles of the abdominal wall were probably torn (yup, our bodies are seriously miracle workers). So take heart if you’ve been doing a crazy number of ab workouts and you still have abdominal fullness. You very likely have rectus diastasis—those torn muscles we just mentioned—and although it’s not something you yourself can repair, a mommy makeover sure can.

The beauty of the mommy makeover is that it’s a combination procedure, which can include a breast augmentation, or breast lift, or both (to perk up those breasts and make them youthful again), a tummy tuck (to tighten up the tummy, repair that rectus diastasis and remove excess unwanted skin) and liposuction (to even everything out and get rid of any fat we don’t really want in the wrong areas anymore). It might include all of those surgeries, or just a couple of them. The point of the mommy makeover is really to address any areas of the body that have been affected by pregnancy or nursing that you want to enhance.

If it’s hard to imagine at the moment, check out some of our mommy makeover before and after photos to get a better sense of the transformation that takes place following this procedure. It’s truly amazing, and our mommy makeover patients are so thrilled with their results.

With a Mommy Makeover, Timing is Everything

Ok, so you’ve checked out the pics and the results are crazy amazing, and you want a mommy makeover right now. We get it. But with any surgical procedure, timing is super important, and with the mommy makeover in particular there are a few things you need to consider before scheduling your surgery.

How old is your baby?

As much as we want to feel beautiful and sexy again, the saying “patience is a virtue” could not be more true with a mommy makeover procedure. In order to get the best possible results from the surgery and to ensure a full and speedy recovery, you basically want to more or less get back to your pre-pregnancy state.

This means that you want to be around your goal weight at the time of the procedure and you probably want to have stopped nursing. The reason for this is that you don’t want to have the surgery and then have major weight fluctuations or have your breasts suddenly change because this can alter your final result and possibly lead to unnecessary revisions. You basically want your surgeon to work on a steady and reliable baseline that you feel comfortable with that isn’t likely to change dramatically.

We often recommend that you wait at least six months to one year before scheduling your surgery, just to be sure that everything is back to more or less normal.

Are you planning on having more kids?

This is also a big one to keep in mind. You might have four kids and be totally done, and so if you’re 100% sure you don’t plan to have any more, then by all means, go for it. But this might be your first baby, and right now you might be super exhausted or you may have had a crazy birth story, and you may be thinking you will never have another kid again. But another funny thing about this whole mom thing is that you can forget those experiences.

You forget the exhaustion and the pain and sleeplessness so quickly, and next thing you know your first born is no longer a newborn and you miss your baby, and boom, you want another one. It’s crazy, but it happens more often than not (totally speaking from experience again, if that wasn’t obvious 😉).

So all of that being said, you want to be done having kids before you go in for the mommy makeover procedure. If you were to get pregnant again, you would most definitely see changes to your breasts and stomach again, which could potentially reverse what the mommy makeover achieved, and so instead of requiring revision surgery, we recommend waiting until you’re ready to make one dramatic change.

What you need to know about recovery following a Mommy Makeover

No matter how many kids you have, you need to be super prepared for mommy makeover recovery. This is an amazing procedure, and there is less recovery time than if you were to have a breast augmentation, a tummy tuck and liposuction all done separately, but you are still having significant surgeries done in one go, and the more complex your surgery the more intensive your recovery process may be.

You need to be prepared for 4-6 weeks of recovery time following a mommy makeover, meaning you are going to need to take it easy and you’ll need to be able to consider this serious “time off” from your usual day-to-day demands. Things that you do without thinking like picking up our kids, or carrying heavy groceries, or chasing little ones around the backyard won’t be an option. For the first few days, walking straight upright will be tough. You’ll have bandages and swelling, and you’ll be tired. It’s totally natural as your body is healing, but the more you are able to rest, the more you are contributing to the best result possible.

If this sounds a bit daunting, don’t let it scare you off from the procedure because the benefits far outweigh any hardships you’ll face along the way. But we want to be upfront that you definitely want a good support system in place for the first month of your recovery. Whether it’s your partner, a parent, a friend or babysitter or all of these lovely people combined, you are going to need their help for a few weeks until you feel like yourself again. And you will!

We love the mommy makeover and what it has done for moms, because we love our moms, and know how hard they work. You deserve this. You may just have to wait a little longer than you thought to get it. But it’s SO worth it.