Post-Pregnancy Plastic Surgery

Getting a Mommy Makeover After Having a Baby

Dubbed "Mom Jobs" and "Mommy Makeovers," having plastic surgery after baby seems to be the trend of the day. And who can blame anyone? Celebrity moms on TV and in magazines seem to get back to their pre-baby weight and practically unattainable pre-baby bodies. 

Baby in the arms of their mother
petrenkod / Getty Images

With pregnancy comes a number of external and internal changes to the body. Some women come out of pregnancy looking as good as they did before and others may not. If you think you need a mom job or a mommy makeover, ​wait for a minimum of six months after the birth of your child before having any body enhancing procedures.

Some believe that waiting a year is more appropriate. In the end, the procedure you want to have done will be one of the determining factors behind how long you should wait. There are four main areas that women focus on after having a baby: breasts, abdomen, love handles, labia, and vagina. Here's a look at each.

Breasts

There are several important considerations as to why waiting is the best plan before considering breast enhancement after pregnancy. Your breasts will be changing for several months after delivery. If you’ve decided to breastfeed, the changes will continue until you've stopped breastfeeding. Breast surgery is not advised until the skin and breast tissue have stabilized.

The timeline: Three to six months after breastfeeding, or three to six months after delivery if you are not breastfeeding.

Abdomen

Even at six months postpartum, there may be changes that are occurring in your abdominal wall and the skin and fat of your abdomen. Undergoing liposuction or a tummy tuck at this time may still be premature. Depending on when you began to show, your skin has been stretched out for anywhere from three to eight months.

The timeline: It can take up to a year for the abdomen to reverse the effects of pregnancy, and even longer for multiples or for pregnancies that are within a year of each other.

Love Handles

Fluctuating hormones, even without pregnancy, can affect fat loss and fat gain. Just think about how your body changes when you’re on your period. Imagine how much more dramatic these fluctuations are during pregnancy and in the postpartum period. Add to that the hormone shifts involved with breastfeeding. It can take up to one year for hormones to normalize after pregnancy.

The timeline: Liposuction can be done before one year is up, but give yourself some time to work the excess off, especially if love handles are a new phenomenon for you. The best solution is to avoid excessive weight gain during pregnancy in the first place to avoid surgery altogether.

Labia and Vagina

Elongated labia and widening of the vaginal canal are some of the possible consequences of childbearing. If this has happened to you, know that as with the stomach and breasts, some time needs to pass for these areas to adjust after delivering a baby.

If you feel as if your vagina is looser than it was before having a vaginal delivery and it is affecting your sex life, a vaginoplasty is a possibility, but should be done at minimum six months after delivery.

If you’re considering having more children, it may be prudent to wait until all childbearing is done. Then again, one may argue that if the vagina is too loose, there will be no more childbearing because sex is “just not the same” and thus is not happening!

As for the labia or vaginal lips, these will shrink after delivery. Elongated vaginal lips are not always a consequence of pregnancy, as some women have them after puberty. If you find that they get in the way of intercourse, exercise, or inhibit your clothing styles, a labiaplasty may be the surgery for you.

The timeline: The body needs time to adjust – at least six months- before considering these procedures after pregnancy.

The Bottom Line

Wait at least six months before having plastic surgery. We personally do not recommend any woman consider cosmetic surgery procedures at the time of childbirth or even shortly after. You should wait until the tissue of the stomach, breasts, and other areas shrink and settle back down which takes at least six months.

Most reputable surgeons will not operate on women in the first six months after giving birth to ensure the women’s bodies have time to get back into shape naturally. There is enough to worry about after bringing a new person into the world without having to worry about recovering from a tummy tuck, liposuction, breast surgery, or vaginal surgery.

2 Sources
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  1. Carniol ET, Carniol PJ. The "mommy makeover" package. Virtual Mentor. 2010;12(5):363-6. doi:10.1001/virtualmentor.2010.12.5.ccas1-1005

  2. Lundqvist A, Sandström H, Bäckström T. The relationship between weight gain during pregnancy and allopregnanolone levels: a longitudinal studyEndocr Connect. 2017;6(4):253–259. doi:10.1530/EC-17-0046