Bringing a new life into the world is an incredibly rewarding experience as you shape the family of your dreams. However, your own shape may fall victim to the limit-pushing forces that come with pregnancy and breastfeeding, leaving you with a less-than-firm belly and drooping breasts, among other things.
At Grossman Plastic Surgery, we help women in West Hills area of Los Angeles, California, regain their pre-baby bodies with a mommy makeover: a collection of procedures designed to help you take back your body.
Read on to explore how a mommy makeover can help undo the effects of pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding.
The bump that doesn’t go away
One of the first areas we tackle when it comes to a mommy makeover is your abdomen, which is often stretched to, and beyond, its limits when you’re pregnant.
Your skin is amazingly resilient, and, thanks to sufficient amounts of collagen and elastin, it’s typically able to bounce back from a fair bit of stretching. But even the healthiest skin can fall prey to overstretching, which damages it, leaving skin limp, drooping, and, in many cases, lined with stretch marks. Multiply this by several pregnancies, and the cumulative effect can make a bikini seem like a distant memory.
With Smartlipo body contouring, we remove fat and tighten the skin. This gives you a firmer, more toned, belly. With a tummy tuck, we remove the excess skin, pull it taut, and stitch it back together. In removing excess tissue, we aim to cut away any skin that’s marred with stretch marks so your flatter abdomen is covered with healthy, youthful skin.
Bouncing back
Another area that often caves to the pressure of having children are your breasts. While you’re pregnant, your hormones surge and your breasts grow larger as they prepare for breastfeeding. After your child is born, your breasts continue their work, providing your baby with needed nutrients through your breast milk.
What this means is that for 18-24 months, or more, your breasts expand and shrink as is necessary, and these changes can take their toll, leaving you with sagging breasts that may be smaller than before pregnancy. To address this, we offer a breast lift, a breast augmentation, or a breast reduction, depending upon your goals.
With a breast lift, we move your breasts up into their pre-baby position on your chest, giving you a more youthful profile. If the position of your breasts didn’t change, but their size did thanks to breastfeeding, we also offer breast augmentation or breast reduction. These procedures can restore the look of your breasts or even give you an entirely new shape if you’d like to modify what Mother Nature gave you.
A private matter
As part of the mommy makeover, we can help undo the effects the delivery had on your vagina with a labiaplasty. Your labia are the folds of skin that surround your vaginal opening that include the majora (outer) and minora (inner) labia. When you deliver vaginally, this skin can become overstretched, leaving you with larger folds of skin that may droop down or twist uncomfortably with movement.
With a labiaplasty, we remove the excess tissue where needed, making your genitals more proportionate, and more comfortable.
Odds and ends
The full mommy makeover can also include a butt augmentation, which we accomplish through fat grafting or implants, giving you a rear end that’s perkier and well able to keep up with your young family. We also can smooth unsightly cellulite, and we have an extensive anti-aging arsenal to help you look your best.
If you’re considering a mommy makeover, you can pick and choose which areas you want to tackle, essentially customizing the makeover to fit your goals. You should only consider this procedure if you’re sure your family is complete and you won’t become pregnant again.
If you’ve given your body over to your children, call us to see about taking it back. You can also use the online scheduling tool to request a consultation anytime.