Los Angeles Mommy Makeover Before & Afters
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OkLong before the television show Extreme Makeover and the expression "mommy makeover," Dr. Teitelbaum had a special section on his website, "Moms, Get Your Body Back." In his Santa Monica plastic surgery practice, he had seen countless fit and beautiful mothers who could not get their body back no matter what they did.
A mommy makeover in Los Angeles is not a fixed schedule of procedures. It merely denotes that something is being done simultaneously to both the abdomen and to the chest in order to restore or even improve a pre-pregnancy body. The procedures done in both of these areas are identical to what can be done on their own to each of them.
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OkA mommy makeover is a combination surgery that renews and rejuvenates the female figure, helping to restore the body to its pre-pregnancy state. For a mommy makeover, a customized surgical plan is designed to address the areas that have changed during pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing.
During most of our mommy makeovers, the breasts are addressed to achieve a round, youthful, and appealing contour. The tummy is addressed to remove loose skin and tighten and firm the abdominal muscles. During your consultation, Dr. Teitelbaum will go over your concerns and together tailor the best mommy makeover for you. Other procedures are also often part of a mommy makeover, as it is designed to address a number of areas at once, resulting in a single anesthesia period and recovery period.
Insurance does not cover mommy makeover surgery, but sometimes an umbilical hernia can develop with pregnancy and this may be covered by insurance. But this is only a small portion of the total cost of a mommy makeover. Tummy tucks and breast procedures are not covered by insurance. The cost for your mommy makeover will be covered in detail at consultation, and financing is available through CareCredit.
Our mommy makeover in Los Angeles helps women regain their physique before having children, restoring their breasts, tummy, and other areas of their body that have changed in unwanted ways after pregnancy and nursing. A mommy makeover can restore confidence and quality of life and help a mother feel at peace with her body again after her children are born.
A few patients will confess to some feelings of guilt—as if they shouldn't be prioritizing themselves. Others will worry about the message it may send to their young children, particularly daughters old enough to notice any change in their mother's body. These are concerns that Dr. Teitelbaum frequently hears from his patients and he considers discussing these issues and what a mommy makeover can them achieve to be nearly as important as the surgery itself.
A mommy makeover combines several procedures at once to minimize the overall cost and recovery time associated with rejuvenating your physique from head to toe. Your exact choice of procedure is carefully tailored to your goals, wishes, comfort levels, and lifestyle. Treatments performed as part of a mommy makeover may include the following:
With our mommy makeover you will reap the benefits or a number of procedures done simultaneously. there is no “fixed” number of procedures, it is simply a procedure done to chest, abdomen and thighs, or any combination of these procedures. The procedures chosen are tailored to your particular needs.
The best candidates for a mommy makeover are:
Although a mommy makeover is called the same thing from one patient to the next, rarely are any two mommy makeovers identical. Thus the recovery time required after a mommy makeover largely depends on what procedures are done in surgery. Full recovery from a mommy makeover may require anywhere from 1 to 4 weeks. This does not however mean that one would be bedridden throughout this entire period. Mommy makeover patients will typically be able to return to light social and professional activities within 10 to 14 days, with healing continuing well beyond this period, and the patient gradually returning to all of the activities she was previously physically capable of.
If the breast skin drops south, then a lift may need to be considered. However, if the breast just collapses or deflates, then a breast augmentation alone is the ideal procedure. In general, A and B cup breasts before babies are more likely to collapse and just need an implant while breasts that were larger C and D cups tend to drop and need a lift. Nevertheless, each patient is different and needs to be assessed in an individual way.
Breast augmentation is the most common breast procedure for moms needing a mommy makeover in Los Angeles. If a woman's breasts are droopy but are still about the size she wants them to be, then she needs a lift. If her breasts are too big for her, then she needs a reduction.
But most frequently, breasts will deflate or collapse. Patients will describe them with terms such as "empty sacks" or "pancaked." Others will say they just got a bit smaller or somehow don't seem as full and perky. Some will mention that augmentation was something they always thought about but chose to delay until they were done having children. One patient aptly described her goal as merely needing "a refill."
Some women are lucky enough to maintain good skin on their hips and stomach and can get the result they want just with liposuction. But, far more often, there is loose or hanging skin, stretch marks, a separation of muscles of their abdominal wall, a protruding belly button, or some puckering along a Caesarean section scar.
During a mommy makeover, a tummy tuck can improve three things:
1. First, it can remove and tighten loose or excess skin and generally can remove stretch marks up to about the height of the belly button. Higher stretch marks are not removed, but look better with the skin stretched tighter. Many women work out, use expensive creams, try various laser treatments, but surgery is the only thing that can actually remove skin.
2. Second, extra fat can also be removed, making a woman thinner and in fact more attractively shaped and better balanced as well. When there is an excess fat layer elsewhere in the abdomen or in the hips, then Dr. Teitelbaum performs simultaneous liposuction to sculpt his patients. Taking an artistic approach to the abdomen means considering the beauty and proportion of the entire trunk.
3. Finally, the two muscles that go up and down the abdomen from the ribs all the way down to the pubic area often separate with pregnancy. The medical term for this is "rectus diastasis," and a tummy tuck can fix this condition. Do a sit-up with your fingers pressing gently in the middle just above your belly button: if you can feel a gap, then you have a diastasis. As the day goes on and you eat and get too tired to hold in your stomach, that gap widens. Some women will say that they even feel pregnant by the end of the day.
Dr. Teitelbaum practices in a community in which many mothers carry twins and triplets as a result of fertility medicine. While some mothers with twins have stomachs no worse than those of mothers with singlets, there is frequently greater laxity of skin and weakness of the abdominal muscles.
There is no single abdominoplasty technique that is best for all women. Some have more separation or muscle weakness; some carried low and some high; some just in the center; and others all over. This creates many different patterns and Dr. Teitelbaum customizes what he does to the abdomens for patients receiving his mommy makeover in Los Angeles to what they need the most. Some may need just a small incision that is no wider than a c-section scar. Others need an incision that goes almost to their backs. Some need their muscles tightened while others do not. Dr. Teitelbaum is eminently experienced in tailoring and executing an operation that best suits each patient.
Liposuction has a very important role in mommy makeovers: For some women it needs to be done in combination with a tummy tuck in order to thin the upper abdomen. For others, the flatter abdomen can make the hips or outer thighs look disproportionate, so liposuction is done in these areas to balance out the smaller stomach. Not infrequently, women lose their waist with pregnancy. Liposuction can re-sculpt this area to narrow the waist and restore—or even improve upon—how a woman looked before her pregnancy.
Some women are lucky enough not to need a tummy tuck but nevertheless have excess fat in their stomach, hip, or outer thighs. This may have been an issue before children, but it can also get worse or develop with weight gain during pregnancy. Dropping this extra fat is often very hard, and so liposuction can be a great help to these patients.
Dr. Teitelbaum continues to use all of the latest and best methods of liposuction including ultrasonic liposuction, syringe liposuction, and power-assisted liposuction. But rather than focusing on a specific technology, he emphasizes both in his lectures and in his practice that the best liposuction results come from the artistry of a surgeon rather than the technology itself.
It is also possible to have a hernia. A diastasis is just a separation, but women with a hernia in that area—called a "ventral hernia"—will usually feel a bulge in addition to the separation. Often, women will develop a hernia in their belly button with pregnancy, converting what used to be an "innie" into an "outie." This is very common and can be fixed with the tummy tuck.
Many mothers want to have a "mini tummy tuck," and this is occasionally possible. But in most cases, a mother's the loose skin is not just towards the center. If a woman sits upright in a chair and looks down, she will see how wide her loose skin extends and she will be able to predict to some extent how wide her scars would need to be to get the best shape. Some women only have loose muscles but maintain tight skin. These women are ideally suited for what is called an "endoscopic tummy tuck" or "endoscopic abdominoplasty," in which only a small, easily concealable incision is made.
Dr. Teitelbaum understands that patients for our mommy makeover in Los Angeles are not just patients—they are mommies. Every step he takes emphasizes health, safety, and the absolute priority of the mother timing the surgery in a way that is most suitable for her and her family.
A big decision mommy makeover patients and their plastic surgeon have to make is how much surgery should be done at once. Every patient is inclined to do everything during one surgery, but recent data suggests that for some patients separating the surgery into separate stages is safer. Dr. Teitelbaum keeps up to date with the most current thinking and will help you develop the surgical plan that is best for you.
While the health of every patient is important, for mommy makeover patients, safety considerations are logically an even greater priority. Not only do moms need to get back to their children quickly, but mommy makeover patients need a sense of security before surgery that they are choosing to do something that will be safe for them and their family.
The decision to undergo a mommy makeover is a personal choice, but one that should be made only with full awareness of the risks and possible complications. Dr. Teitelbaum practices a precise, detailed, and conservative approach that greatly minimizes your risks. However, there are some unavoidable risks that come with any surgery. These include the following:
After your mommy makeover, your scars will gradually lighten and become less noticeable.
Dr. Teitelbaum practices a conservative, precision-minded technique that helps keep incisions well-hidden throughout your treatment.
A mommy makeover will give you more confidence in your appearance and may expand your wardrobe choices to include swimwear and eveningwear that you previously thought didn’t suit you. It will help to sculpt a more streamlined, slim physique, restoring your bust and waistline for a more youthful presentation. If you are careful to avoid weight fluctuations, stay out of the sun and wear the proper sunblock, follow a healthy diet and exercise regimen, and follow Dr. Teitelbaum’s instructions after surgery, your mommy makeover results will last for years to come.
Dr. Teitelbaum was rigorously trained in surgery at Beth Israel Hospital/Harvard Medical School. His approach to mommy makeover patients is enthusiastic, artistic, and creative—an approach built on the foundation of his training as a scientist and physician. Since 1993, Dr. Teitelbaum has done various sorts of mommy makeovers for hundreds of women, restoring their bodies to as close to their pre-pregnancy condition as modern medicine allows—and oftentimes making their bodies better than they were even before their pregnancies.
To learn more, call 310.315.1121 or click here to contact us, and schedule a consultation with Dr. Teitelbaum for arguably the best mommy makeover Los Angeles has to offer.