Blog
PST 006: Moms Take Their Body Back — Read the Transcript
Welcome to Plastic Surgery Talk with Dr. Stephen Mulholland, brought to you by SpaMedica.
Hello, and welcome. Dr. Stephen Mulholland in Toronto at SpaMedica, Plastic Surgery Talk, and our podcast this week is on Mommy Makeovers. So, what is a Mommy Makeover? Well clearly, it’s a mommy who’s had children — child or children, plural — and then is looking for a makeover. So, the three things that are generally integrated in part or in total of a Mommy Makeover are going to be breast surgery, usually a breast augment, with or without a lift; a tummy work, sometimes liposuction, but usually after kids, and loose skin, there’s going to be a tummy tuck; and a little bit of lipo of the hips, flanks, or thighs to bring the entire truncal body, breast and tummy, hips and thighs, and recapture some of that youthful beauty and youthful vitality you had before kids. So you’re a mommy, you’ve had kids, you’ve had deflation of the breast, you need volume back. Often the augment will give a lift. You’ve got some loose skin of the tummy, maybe your muscle’s week and you’ve got belly button work that needs to be done, you need a tummy tuck. And maybe a little extra fat on the love handles, inner/outer thighs. That is the essence of the Mommy Makeover.
The questions becomes, how long after babies should you consider a makeover? And in general, the answer is give yourself time to get back in shape. So you’ve stopped breastfeeding, first. Let the breasts deflate. Start exercising, go to the gym, do some cardio, work on your core strength, work on your ideal body weight. And once you’ve given yourself six months to a year after your last child, you’ve done all you can through diet and exercise to capture the figure that you want, that’s when you see your experienced plastic surgeon to discuss your Mommy Makeover.
Okay you’ve done your Mommy Makeover, you’ve got your breasts back, they’re awesome, you love them, they’re perky, they’re full, you’ve got a nice cohesive gel breast implant. You’ve done a mini tummy tuck or a full tummy tuck, your tummy’s flat and tight with a nice belly button. You’ve done some liposuction, you’ve got your hips and your flanks back, and you are looking great, sometimes even better than you looked before kids. And, boom, along comes the big white stork and drops a baby right on your front doorstep.
What happens if you get pregnant after your Mommy Makeover? Well, usually it’s not a disaster because now, rewind, back to when you were in your 20s and you had your first baby, you’ve done the tummy tuck, the tummy’s tight. Often the tummy will survive the first pregnancy, it’s the second or third that does you in. So a modest weight gain during a post-tummy-tuck-pregnancy, usually the tummy’s okay. Sometimes a little skin pinch will tighten it up. The breasts, if they deflate a lot and you’re relying on your breast augment, they’ll usually survive another child with breastfeeding without another revision. And if you don’t put on more than the 25 recommended pounds during pregnancy, your liposuction to the thighs and flanks will survive. So the good news is, it’s not great news, but it’s usually not a disaster because your body has been restored back to like you had in your early to mid 20s. And often you survive without any surgery with a pregnancy after a Mommy Makeover.
Are the results of a Mommy Makeover permanent? Yes and no. The breast implants are for life, they’re guaranteed for life, the new gummy bear, cohesive INSPIRA brand of breast augmentation. The implant’s warrantied for life. Your skin will get a little more taught, it can droop slightly, but generally you do it once and you’re usually going to be good for life. The tummy tuck, because we pull down, and Isaac Newton pulls down, and gravity and the tummy tuck are working together. And like a face lift where we lift up, and Isaac Newton wants to pull it down, you often have to redo a facelift or a mini lift after 10 years. The tummy tuck, once. If you do it well, you’ll heal well, and it’s tight, you’ll be tight in your tummy forever. So, that is permanent. And the liposuction zone, so we do a little lipo of your inner/outer thigh and your flanks, as long as you don’t gain weight or you maintain that five to ten pound weight gain and loss around your surgical weight, the lipo is permanent. So, the lipo fat ain’t coming back, so it’s permanent. The tummy tuck is tight, it’s going to last forever, and your implants are warrantied for life. So yes, it will last the rest of your life if you get it right the first time. And then protect your investment with weight management and modest exercise.
The thing about a Mommy Makeover is there’s a big commitment to recovery. Remember you’re doing a tummy tuck, you’re undoing one, two, three, or four children. The muscles have been separated, we bring them together, we’re pulling the skin down, there’s a new belly button, and it’s sore. So the tummy tuck’s about a three week recovery till you feel reasonably comfortable, you’re walking reasonably normal. Breast augmentation falls into the first week of that three weeks, and liposuction to the first week of that three weeks. So the big umbrella is tummy tuck recovery, the liposuction, breast augment fall under it. After three weeks, you can be back to a sedentary job. After three weeks, you can be back in the gym doing, say, elliptical stair climber. After six weeks, you can start to do crunches and high impact aerobic activity. So it took you one, two, three or more pregnancies to result in loss of that sexy mommy figure, and it takes you three weeks and surgery to get it back. Not an insignificant recovery, but certainly not unreasonable for the lifetime of gain you get out of a new figure from the breast down to the tummy, and from the hips and the flanks to the thigh. So usually three weeks off, back to work at sedentary jobs after three weeks. Back to the gym, heavy duty gym work at six weeks, and the results are going to last the rest of your life.
Often get asked during a Mommy Makeover consultation, “Do I need to lose weight?” And the answer is yes. Get to your ideal body weight for you. You don’t want to lose a lot of weight that’s artificial, not realistically able to maintain, and then put the weight on after the procedure. So, get to a weight you’re comfortable with that you can live at. You want to lose the weight before surgery if possible because the weight loss will lead to loose skin. Loose skin means we can remove that loose skin at the time of the tummy tuck and cast it aside. You don’t want to lose a lot of weight after the Mommy Makeover because you may have residual laxity that we have to go back and address. So get in shape to the best of your ability, lose weight to a reasonable weight, don’t be unrealistic, a weight that you can maintain for the rest of your life within 10 pounds. 10 pounds won’t matter up or down. If you maintain that surgical weight, you’ll have a lifelong result that won’t be subject to weight gain/weight loss.
Mommy Makeovers are very popular because they bring together three or four of the most common procedures under one umbrella event: breast augmentation with or without a lift, tummy tuck with muscle repair skin removal and belly button creation, and localized liposuction. The more you do, the less you tend to pay. So most surgeons will offer bundled pricing, meaning that you’re already in the O.R., the spent cost of having the staff there, opening up the instruments, having the anesthesiologist already there. So your second and third procedure, you’re often going to save 20, 30, 40% over normal list price for that procedure done unto itself because the barrier to entry, the cost of the staff, the anesthesiologist, is already there. So, it’s more cost effective to do your breast augment, tummy tuck, and lipo together under the Mommy Makeover umbrella than it is to do each individual of those three procedures separately because you have bundle savings.
Are Mommy Makeovers more common than they were 10 years ago? Absolutely. Why? We have a whole young Baby Boomer generation just come out of a childbirth. They’ve had all their kids in their 30s and their 40s, they’re now in their 40s, and they’re trying to recapture their youth again. Diet, exercise, yoga, and Pilates, all attempts to recapture the core strength. What you can’t exercise is loose skin. You can’t exercise breast deflation. You can’t always localize the fat reduction to a thigh, inner or outer, you usually lose it where you don’t want to lose it. So, Mommy Makeovers are common because there’s more and more women that are now done with their childbearing years and want to recapture their youthful vitality, some of that attractive, youthful look they had to their figure. We now have technologies and techniques that are better than they ever were, and women are more attune to making the financial commitments to their shape, figure, and form for both the workplace, the workforce, social life, and dating. Many Mommy Makeover mommies may be single and they want to get back in the dating world, and getting back that figure and form gives them the confidence to do so. Many are doing it just for themselves to look better in work clothing or out of clothing and in bathing wear.
So, there’s never been a better time to do it because the surgical techniques have never been better, the results have never been better, and there’s a larger group of women that are now done their baby years, they’re looking to recapture and sustain the youth they once had in their figure.
What if you’re not a mommy but you’ve had weight loss or weight gain? You’ve had, let’s say, gastric surgery or a lap band and you’ve gone from being too heavy and lost a lot of weight, and you’re very happy with your new weight, but you’re not happy with the skin envelopes. So, all Mommy Makeovers don’t need to be mommies. If you’ve had a lot of weight loss/weight gain, you may have breast deflation, loss of volume, abdominal laxity and sagging, and localized areas of fat. So some Mommy Makeovers, which include, again, the breast augmentation, tummy tuck, and liposuction, can be beneficial to non mommies who have had significant weight loss/weight gain.
Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed our podcast on Mommy Makeover. Dr. Stephen Mulholland, again, plastic surgery here at SpaMedica in Toronto. Please visit our website spamedica.com, look up Mommy Makeovers, look up breast augmentation, localized high-tech liposuction. And above all, if you’ve really enjoyed our podcast information today, please share it on all your social media channels.
Dr. Mulholland's Google Scholar | Dr. Mulholland's Wikipedia
