Cosmetic Plastic Surgery Articles

If hyaluronic acid isn’t already a household name, it’s right on the cusp. It features prominently in a growing inventory of popular serums, sheet masks, and moisturizers.

It’s a sugar molecule that occurs naturally in the skin and binds to water to plump up your skin and make it somehow look dewy and like it’s glowing all at once. Natural hyaluronic acid is bound to collagen on one side and linked to water molecules on the other, which is what gives skin its plumpness.

Trouble is, as we age, we lose both collagen and hyaluronic acid naturally, which means our skin becomes dehydrated more easily. Our faces can also start to look a bit deflated, as a result.

Picking up where nature leaves off

The aforementioned products have been shown to increase moisture and even firm skin around the eye area and soften fine lines on the rest of the face. Hydrating skin-care ingredients—think glycerin, urea, propylene glycol, and sorbitol, among others—act as humectants, attracting water to the skin in an effort to hydrate it.

As an ingredient, hyaluronic acid does that and more. It can lock in moisture from the environment and deeper dermis, enhancing the hydrating effect. And that effect is more pronounced in those who are middle-aged and older, since our bodies are producing less of it.

Going even deeper

You may also recognize the injectable version. In dermal fillers, hyaluronic acid is a gel-like product that attracts water to the injection site to regenerate volume and recreate lost structure, reducing the face’s deflated appearance and softening the overall look of lines and wrinkles.

These fillers can address a range of concerns, including the nasolabial folds, marionette lines (the folds that run vertically from the corners of the mouth down to the chin), cheek augmentation, under-eyes, lips, and the tops of the hands. But one filler does not fit all. Yes, they’re all made up of the same ingredient, but depending on the size of the formulas’ molecules and how they’re structured, they vary in density, lift-ability, and longevity. So, finding a board-certified plastic surgeon with extensive experience with dermal fillers is critical.

Aside from their versatility, hyaluronic acid fillers are a good way to dip a toe into cosmetic plastic surgery for the uninitiated because they’re minimally-invasive, require very little, if any, recovery time, and they’re reversible.

If you’re not happy with the results, your plastic surgeon can insert an enzyme called hyaluronidase to dissolve the filler within a matter of minutes. Minimal risk and a potentially big reward.

Though it’s too soon for any formal research on the pandemic, many moms have said anecdotally that they’ve been feeling the strain. “I feel like I have five jobs,” one mom told The New York Times.

For some, that stress may be piling up on top of what was already an unsteady foundation. Parenting, particularly in the early days and particularly for mothers, is an all-consuming process. It can feel like you sacrifice much of your life only to emerge a few years later, virtually unrecognizable to yourself.

When you’ve already expended so much energy in raising your infants, it can feel like there’s nothing left to give to yourself. So, you begin making small concessions that, before long, become new habits.

Change begins not with reversing that trend, but with simply becoming aware of it. And once you start to see how easy it was to make choices that undermined your wellbeing, you’ll begin to feel empowered by the potential to shift your course.

Gaining confidence

Once a woman starts to reclaim her sense of self, she’ll become more confident, knowing she can be a mom without eliminating all other aspects of her identity. A mommy makeover, then, even for women who never previously considered plastic surgery, is a means to a fresh start, an opportunity to match her physical appearance not to the woman she remembers before she had kids but to the woman she wants to be for them.

Mommy makeover is a term that’s used to describe a combination of surgical procedures that are done in a single session. While the exact combination can be tailored to your needs and wants, it typically involves a tummy tuck, which is sometimes paired with diastasis recti repair, to tighten the abdomen and repair separated core muscles; breast augmentation, with or without a breast lift, to replace lost fullness and restore sagging breasts; and liposuction to remove excess fat and recontour the body.

Timing it right

Perhaps the biggest benefit of the mommy makeover is that, with a single surgery, you can address a range of concerns. Which means that you’re going under anesthesia only once and you’re also enduring just a single recovery.

The key is finding the right time to undergo the surgery. Every board-certified plastic surgeon will recommend that you wait until you’re done having kids. Enduring another pregnancy and labor will undo all of the surgical results. Even more, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to achieve the same results with a second mommy makeover at that point.

The recovery will go by faster than you think it will—most women can return to work within two to three weeks—but it’s critical that you be patient with yourself and give yourself the time and space to heal. If you have young kids, that may mean having your spouse or partner do the bulk of the parenting for a while. Even before that point, you’ll want to be in the proper headspace. It’s not so much about tempering your expectations as it is making sure you’re thinking big enough about the new phase of life that’s ahead of you.