Abdominoplasty after Pregnancyin Darien

An abdominoplasty is an operation that is designed to undo, in general, all the things that children have done to women during pregnancy. During pregnancy, obviously as the child grows, the two muscles that normally go up and down on your belly are stretched out and separated, and the skin is also stretched out, frequently beyond its ability to compensate. So after children many women have laxity in both the abdominal muscular wall as well as the skin. Abdominoplasty, if properly performed, is designed to correct both of those issues as well as improve the overall shape and contour of the woman's abdomen. During abdominoplasty, a low incision is made from hip bone down low to where a c-section scar would be, and then back up to the other hip bone. The entire skin is elevated up to the rib cage. The muscles that go up and down, which have been stretched out through pregnancy, are sewn back together to provide a tight, flat base for the abdomen. The extra skin is then pulled down and removed. At the same time, I personally do liposuction on virtually every patient that has an abdominoplasty. I think that at its core, an abdominoplasty is removing skin from the interior part of the abdomen. But, it can be much more than that. Many surgeons who just remove that piece of skin, don't pay attention to the contouring aspects of the abdominoplasty. When you perform liposuction at the same time, you can thin the waist and narrow the shape, and return the woman to more of an hourglass shape which she had before having children. Sometimes, you can even make their shape a little bit better than before they had children. So, abdominoplasty, when coupled with liposuction provides a huge opportunity to really reshape and re-contour a woman's abdomen. They are really only two types of abdominoplasty. The first, and by far the most powerful operation is a full abdominoplasty in which a traditional incision is made. Again, the skin is elevated all the way up the rib cage, and the muscles are repaired. For some women who do not have laxity issues above the belly button, we can restrict the surgery to below, making a shorter incision, repairing a muscular defect below the belly button, and removing a smaller amount of skin. Again, that applies to a relatively small percentage of the population who have no laxity issues above their belly button. Patients frequently ask, what is it that I can do to make sure my operation turns out the best. Should I take medication ahead of time? Should I take vitamins? The answer is you should properly plan to have a good recovery time where you can really commit to yourself, which in particular is hard for mothers. To make sure that you've got the time to recover. If you do that, the operations go well, and people recover beautifully. But, it does take a little bit of time.