Davis

The “mommy makeover” is an apt term for a fluid combination of procedures performed to restore a woman’s anatomy following pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing—events that cause tissues to stretch, scar, and sag. The most popular blueprint involves breast surgery (an augmentation, lift, or reduction), a tummy tuck, and liposuction.

Googling any of these procedures will yield a wealth of information, but it rarely delves into the practicalities surrounding the experience that women need to know before committing to the surgery and taking a hiatus from the constant multitasking that’s become a way of life for moms in the era of COVID-19. 

So, over the next two posts, I’ll address the real-life issues, from the pragmatic to the personal, on the minds of women mulling a mommy makeover.

How soon can I have a mommy makeover after I’ve stopped nursing?

Whether you’re having a breast augmentation with implants, a breast lift (with or without implants), or a breast reduction as part of your mommy makeover, your plastic surgeon will likely wait to perform the surgery until you’re at least three to six months removed from breastfeeding. That’s done to allow the milk to completely dry up and breast tissues to retract to their new baseline.

In the weeks immediately after nursing, the milk ducts are enlarged and there can be some bacteria lining those ducts. Bacteria in the presence of breast implants raises the risk of complications. There’s a little more flexibility with the timing if you’re just having a reduction or lift.

Can a tummy tuck incision be made over a C-section scar?

The average C-section scar is about a third of the length of a tummy tuck incision, which reaches from hip to hip to allow for maximum skin removal. It’s reasonable, then, to assume the incision can be made over the scar. The trouble is, most C-section scars are a little higher than you’d want for a tummy tuck incision. So rather than repurposing it, surgeons will usually go below it and eliminate it completely.

Can a tummy tuck help with lower back pain?

In a word: Yes. Because the operation typically corrects the abdominal muscle separation (or rectus diastasis) that occurs during pregnancy. When those muscles can’t stretch anymore, they widen and split. And they’re never quite the same again. The front of the core is left weak and the back ends up overcompensating.

During a tummy tuck, those abdominal muscles are realigned and sutured together, corset-style. A 2018 study showed a significant improvement in not only back pain but also urinary incontinence, which women commonly experience after giving birth.

What should I tell my kids about my surgery?

Sometimes women can feel kind of guilty for prioritizing themselves when they’re always in such high demand at home and work. While honesty is always the best way to go, moms tend to feel most comfortable focusing on the restorative nature of the mommy makeover. Maybe explain what happens to the tummy during and after pregnancy and say, “We’re just tweaking it to get it back to where it was.”

In my next post, I’ll get into the nuances of the recovery, including how soon you can pick up your kids again after a mommy makeover.

What are cheek fillers accomplishing? This relatively straightforward question has sparked a lot of debate recently. For years, it was widely accepted that injecting the cheeks with a hyaluronic acid-based filler can, among a number of benefits, lift the middle of the face, smoothing smile lines and tightening sagging jowls. But that ability is now being drawn into question.

Where does that leave us? And, more importantly, what can you expect from the procedure?

Distinguishing perception from reality

What’s actually happening is a sort of reinflation that’s being confused by some injectors as lifting. Filler can contour specific areas of the face (and body), adding volume where it’s otherwise been lost or perhaps never naturally existed, creating a more symmetrical or youthful-looking appearance. 

Wherever it’s injected, the filler will plump. And that swelling effect can appear to lift the overlying skin in both the targeted and surrounding areas.

Visually, the effect is real. By adding volume to the middle of the face, cheek filler creates definition and symmetry. And not only will the cheeks look more angular, the new definition and volume will also enhance the lower part of the face.

But physically, no filler—not yet, at least—is capable of achieving an actual lift. It’s difficult to accomplish even with a scalpel and sutures. That’s because facial tissue is heavy, and it’s fused into position with large and small ligaments.

In a recent study, a board-certified plastic surgeon examined the effect of cheek fillers on the nasolabial fold, specifically. Using a three-dimensional camera, he sought to find out whether “adding volume to the cheeks creates a pulling force on the skin that elevates the nasolabial crease or nasolabial fold.”

While he found that filler, in fact, expanded the skin where it was injected, it didn’t lift the fold. However, the expansion did lead to a “perceived improvement of the nasolabial fold.”

The takeaway

Setting your expectations prior to the procedure, with your plastic surgeon’s help, is critical. If it’s injected at the proper points and depths, cheek filler may be able to help create a subtle, localized lift. But it won’t structurally lift the underlying facial tissue.

So, if you want smoother nasolabial folds and a tighter jawline, consider another procedure. But if improved symmetry, definition, and volume restoration through the middle of the face is your goal, cheek filler can help.

Dr. Davis and the team at Davis Cosmetic Plastic Surgery are experts in making our patients look great and feel better. If you have any questions regarding these or other procedures, please contact our office and we are happy to help.

Breast augmentation and liposuction were the top two cosmetic surgical procedures performed last year, just as they were in 2018 and for several years prior to that. For all that consistency, plastic surgery is also a field that’s constantly evolving. There’s the innovation, which is occurring at a breakneck speed, spurring new products and treatments and honing existing techniques. There’s also the ever-shifting interests of our patients. 

These days, trends catch fire in a matter of hours, not days, and plastic surgery is no exception. Women and men are entering consultations with their plastic surgeons informed and with very specific ideas about what they want. These are a couple of the most popular requests from recent weeks.

Skin tightening

The proliferation of Zoom calls has been a wake-up call for many of us. Blame it on the bad lighting or the unflattering camera angle. But even with those allowances, we’re spending more time than we ever have before staring at our imperfections. The most common complaint to emerge: sagging skin.

Plastic surgeons are responding with a combination of treatments, entirely under local anesthesia, that address multiple layers of aging. Most commonly, the combination includes AccuTite of the brow, eyes, nasolabial folds, jowls, and chin, which tightens the deeper facial tissue; along with Morpheus8, to tighten the superficial tissue of the whole face; and then ActiveFX of the eyes, face, and neck, to address tone, texture, pigmentation, pore reduction, and fine lines.

It’s a powerful treatment that tightens and lifts, particularly around the eyes and middle of the face.

Hip augmentation

Three years removed from Kylie Jenner’s hourglass figure transformation and it still resonates with women of all ages who feel like they’re lacking feminine hip curves, as well as transfeminine people whose hips remain straight in spite of the estrogen they’re taking. Hip augmentation, in a growing number of instances, is proving to be the solution.

There are two options. With a fat transfer, the plastic surgeon extracts fat from another part of the body through liposuction. The fat is then injected into the hip area. Hip implants, however, are considered the more effective treatment. The implants are made of a semi-solid silicone that’s crafted to look and feel similar to natural muscle tissue. The relatively small implants are inserted through small incisions in the underwear line and positioned under the skin, fat, and tough fascia layers.

The effects of a fat-transfer hip augmentation generally last about four months, while the implants are permanent.

If you want to discuss your options and how the Davis Cosmetic Plastic Surgery team can help, please feel free to contact us to schedule your virtual consult.

When I ask a prospective patient what she wants to get out of her breast augmentation, she may tell me she wants larger breasts or perkier breasts. It’s a modest goal because she may believe that the success of her procedure comes down to the size and shape of her implant, when in reality, there are lots of different approaches that I can use to truly customize her results.

Similarly, prospective patients often arrive in my office distraught over their abdomens (or the chronic back pain that may stem from their weakened core muscles), yet hoping for only a small improvement. Their lack of mobility and the unflattering image they see in their reflection have taken over their lives, and they just want to get back to a state that feels closer to normal for them, never considering that I could do much better than that.

As a plastic surgeon, I appreciate the body as a collection of intricate networks. In other words, where a patient may be focused on a particular area she’s deemed to be a problem, my eye takes in a broader sample. If, for example, I was to remove a bit of fat from a patient’s abdomen, as she’s asked me to do, what effect will that have on the skin around her midsection? Even a slight adjustment will have a ripple effect. So I try to think several steps ahead, always focused on the patient’s goals, but also conscious of a host of other issues they’re probably not aware of that could affect the result.

More than meets the eye

The abdomen is a prime example. My patients are usually most self-conscious about any fat they may have accumulated in the area, often as a result of a pregnancy (or pregnancies). And there is certainly no shortage of techniques or technologies to address that. But that alone is not going to produce the result she wants because the skin around her abdomen may also have weakened—stretch marks are a telltale sign—which means it’ll likely sag once the fat’s removed.

And her biggest issue may be the one she can’t see and might not even be aware of, which is the abdominal muscle separation that occurs nearly universally with pregnancy. The front of the core is left weak, as a result, and the back winds up overcompensating. By realigning those abdominal muscles and suturing them together corset-style, strength and stability return to the abdomen and pelvic region.

You shape the treatment

While each issue is interconnected, that doesn’t mean everything needs to be addressed at once. Here, I’ll defer to my patient. If she’s most concerned about removing the fat, there are a number of ways I can about that, from liposuction to a number of minimally-invasive methods, including CoolSculpting, which freezes pockets of fat, and Kybella injections, which dissolves them instantly.

There are as many options available for skin-tightening and minimizing the appearance of stretch marks, including non-invasive radiofrequency devices.

Let us make sure the treatment is tailored to your specific needs, goals, and schedule. If you’ve been busy outlining all the reasons why you can’t come in to meet with me—it’s time to put them to rest and find out what’s possible.

Contact Davis Plastic Surgery in Cherry Hill with any questions or to schedule a virtual consultation. We look forward to hearing from you.

The tummy tuck is one of the most transformative procedures in plastic surgery. Scanning before-and-after images, it’s easy to be swept up by the dramatic changes in appearance. But in doing so, you may miss the subtler nuances, like the proportions of the navel and the discreet contours of the abdomen, that signal next-level outcomes.

Like so many avenues of cosmetic plastic surgery, the tummy tuck has evolved considerably in recent years. Dr. Davis has refined his techniques and learned how to safely enhance their results. When choosing surgical providers it usually comes down to small differences in those results. To help with your decision, here are three details you want to make sure to note while reviewing galleries.

A low-profile scar

Ideally, a tummy tuck scar heals as a fine line just above or slightly within the pubic hair. The goal, of course, is for it to be completely concealed when you pull on a standard bikini bottom. Mind you, that’s a big ask, considering the average tummy tuck incision runs from hip bone to hip bone. And because most people’s hips and backs aren’t perfectly straight to begin with.

That said, the scar, while remaining out of sight, should actually accentuate the overall result. The tummy tuck involves tugging, contouring, and a bit of geometry. By creating a low-sitting scar, the surgeon’s able to change the way the sides look and the way the abdomen itself looks. So, also look for a scar that’s balanced and symmetric.

A contoured midsection

Appealing as a tight-looking abdomen might sound, it doesn’t look natural. The current standard (which does) is softer and shapelier, with subtle curves and depressions. To achieve those contours, liposuction is usually incorporated into the tummy tuck.

In addition to removing fat from the hips, flanks, and back during the surgery, meticulous surgeons will carefully sculpt the area above the belly button, which creates a barely-perceptible little groove that’s inherent in a youthful abdomen. Details like that may be very subtle, but they all contribute to the overall result.

Davis Cosmetic Plastic Surgery is here to assist you to get the goals you want. Please contact us and we are more than happy to assist you in selecting the right procedure and answer your questions via a virtual consult.