From 2007
Dr. Steven J. White calls it the “postpartum perk-up” or the “mommy makeover.”
Tummy tuck. Breast implants and/or a lift. Liposuction around the thighs and hips. All the procedures that get rid of the stuff those sweet little bundles of joy leave behind on their way out.
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| Shannon Bush and her children. |
Local plastic surgeons have seen a significant increase in women having post-baby procedures in the last five years. Breast augmentation was the top surgical cosmetic procedure for women last year for the first time, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. Liposuction was second; abdominoplasty (or tummy tuck) was fourth.
But if we work hard enough, can’t we get rid of the baby fat? Not necessarily. Some women accept the changes in their bodies as a rite of passage into motherhood. These days, though, more moms are choosing surgery instead.
“It’s not a sign of defeat to have a tummy tuck,” says Dr. White, who does more of them than anything else at his practice, USA Plastic Surgery in Dallas. “One of my patients weighed 110 and taught Pilates and yoga. Loose skin won’t go away. Muscles will only tighten so much.”
A friend of White’s once used a bag of balloons to describe it. She laid one on the counter, never blown up. She then blew up a balloon and deflated it, laying it on the counter. Then another one, twice, and did the same. Each got bigger as it lay in its deflated state. “This is what happened to my tummy after your two kids,” White remembers the woman telling her husband.
Surgeons generally recommend waiting to have surgery until you’ve had your last baby and at least three to six months after you’re done breast-feeding. Having surgery when your youngest is close to 3 and can get in and out of his car seat makes things much easier. Ideally, you should have tried diet and exercise, but maybe you’ve hit a plateau, and you’re within 10 to 20 pounds of a realistic weight goal. The more fit you are going into surgery, the better your results. Dr. Brenda Draper of Dallas has had patients whose personal trainers have suggested plastic surgery.
“More women are talking to each other about getting things done,” says Dr. Draper, who estimates 25 percent of her patients come to her with post-baby concerns. “It’s still a private matter, but there’s more communication. I still sense when they come in, they’re embarrassed. But I tell them it’s not their fault. These children are wonderful to have, but they change your body.”
BIKINI BODY, REVISITED
After Shannon Bush’s second child was born, her breasts looked like golf balls at the end of a pair of tube socks. Not exactly the figure she remembered from her beach days in Mexico.
And that was okay. Really. Vanity wasn’t the main reason Bush decided to have a breast lift. She simply wanted her clothes to fit again.
“Nothing fit me at all anymore,” the Lakewood stay-at-home mom remembers. “When I wore my old bras, I had all this skin laying in these big, giant cups. I couldn’t wear dresses I used to wear. I’d try on 15 things, and nothing looked right because my nipples were at my waist.”
Soon before her 32nd birthday, when her son was 3 and her daughter almost 1, Bush took a picture of herself from Playa del Carmen, Mexico, and asked her plastic surgeon, Dr. Fritz Barton, if he could lift up her breasts like that again. The changes in her breasts came from pregnancy, Dr. Barton told her, not from breast-feeding.
“Think about how much your body changes in those months,” Dr. Barton told her. “All that stuff is expanding, and once the baby is born, your body tries to go back to normal. Everyone thinks it’s from nursing, but it’s just from pregnancy.”
Barton told her he could give her back her Mexico bikini look, but she needed implants to replace the lost volume.
“I really struggled with that,” she says. “I never walked in thinking I would get implants. But I wanted the fullness back, and I couldn’t get that fullness without adding the tissue.”
As she considered her options, she would joke with her friends about who had better breasts—Bush or her grandmother—and was constantly trying to keep her breasts inside her bathing suit top at the pool.
The recovery was tough, especially with two small children she couldn’t lift. She was wrapped up like a mummy for a few days, and she was in quite a bit of pain for more than three weeks. An augmentation has a much easier recovery, but the lift is more invasive. After a few months of swelling, Bush was a 36C, just as she was before she had kids. No more ball in a tube sock.
“It was absolutely worth it,” she says. “If something about your body is bothersome, if it’s something that’s always on your mind, if you’re always self-conscious to the point where you don’t feel secure, I would do it in a heartbeat.”
BACK TO HER OLD (AND IMPROVED) SELF
When Beth Hughes was in high school, her mom got a tummy tuck.
“I didn’t even really know what it was,” Hughes remembers. “I kind of knew what she did, but she never showed me. She described muscle repair more than skin removal. I was fit and in pretty good shape before I had kids, so I didn’t think much about it.”
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| Beth Hughes and her children kid around for the camera. |
Hughes, who is 5-foot-9, weighed 145 pounds before she had kids and got up to 203 with her first pregnancy. The 29-year-old Keller resident—who dedicates most of her time to her 4-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter—joined Weight Watchers, ran, and lifted weights. She got down to 170 between kids, then down to 150 after her second pregnancy.
But her stomach still looked like it had stretched enough to hold a watermelon, then tried to shrink back up. Which it had. Twice.
“It was hard because I am young,” she says. “I worked so hard losing the weight, yet I would look around at my friends and everyone at the gym, and everyone was so tight and toned, especially in the mid-section. I couldn’t lose that much more weight. I was shrinking, but my stomach wasn’t.”
Hughes’ mid-section was her main concern, but she also had some sagging and asymmetry with her breasts. And, while she was considering cosmetic surgery, she figured her thighs could use a little work, too.
She met with Dr. White. Her goal: “Just put me back together.”
She decided to do a tummy tuck, liposuction on her thighs, and a breast lift. She did it all at once in March, after lining up two weeks of family help with her kids. She trained for the surgery like she would for an athletic event. Her theory was that if she was in good shape going in, her recovery would be easier, which is true, surgeons say.
Before the surgery, Hughes was a size 10-12. Now, although she weighs the same, she’s a 6-8. Her waist went from 31.5 inches to 26. Not only did Dr. White remove extra skin from around her waist, but he also tightened the muscles.
“I look better than before I had the kids,” she says, pulling out honeymoon pictures as proof. “I feel almost completely normal. I’d kind of gotten to a point where it was time for me again. I don’t want to be the martyr mother who turns around when my daughter is 15 and says, ‘Oh, I let myself go.’ I wanted to get myself back to where I felt like I was on the inside.”
A NEW SHAPE FOR A NEW MOM
Wetona LaRue had seen an abdominoplasty from the other end of the table before she decided to have one herself.
“I saw other women having it done, and I saw the results,” says LaRue, a 42-year-old surgical technician from Royse City. “I knew the risks. I thought, ‘You know, I can do this.’ It’s not as horrible as it sounds. Having a C-section was much worse.”
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| Wetona LaRue shares a special moment with her son. |
At 36, LaRue gave birth to her son, Luke. On bed rest for some of her pregnancy, she had gone from 140 pounds to 210. She tried walking and dieting until she was down to about 170 by the time her son was 3.
“I lost weight, but my stomach was still flab,” she says. “I think some women are very hesitant about the surgery because of the scars. But I had to weigh the scar versus the result.”
At 42, she decided to go with the scar.
She went on to lose 20 more pounds. She started running four miles a day, four mornings a week. At 5-foot-2 and 130 pounds, she again has a bikini-worthy body.
“There are a lot of women having children later in life, and your metabolism isn’t quite the same,” she says. “You’re not 18 years old, having a child, and fitting in your jeans to go home. After you have a child, it’s a battle. But the abdominoplasty really just tightened my stomach in a way I couldn’t have done with diet and exercise. It’s almost like a girdle. It gives you shape, brings in the waistline a little bit. Before, I kind of looked like a box.”
Her downtime after the surgery was less than she expected, just a few days. And although her scar is larger than the one left by her C-section, it’s a much prettier version. OB/GYNs specialize in delivering babies, not cosmetic surgery, LaRue points out. Draper, who did LaRue’s surgery, cut out the C-section scar, leaving a smooth tummy tuck scar in its place, which is easily concealed by a bathing suit bottom.
LaRue says she feels confident about her body now. “I look better than I did many years ago,” she says. “There are women of all different sizes who are very comfortable and very happy. That’s the ultimate goal. You need to be happy with yourself and your results.”
