julie1969

sorry for the second comment..i wanted to ask if your doctor has explained to the t what he will be doing as part of your specific stomach reshaping? some docs are a bit vague about this. my stomach looked similar to yours. i had to kind of corner my doc to get the exact strategies that he was going to do, but it helped me to know what to expect. with mine, he did a large inciscion, fileted up to my stomach muscles, stitched them back tight, cut away alot of excess tissue and skin that was lax and hanging over my stomach, he then stretched the skin from above my belly button [kind of below my rib cage] all the way down to the skin above my public bone, stitching these two edges together, and cutting out a new belly button. the scar healed very nicely but is super long, it goes all the way around my waist back to my flanks. one side of my stomach healed great the other has the scar tissue, i think because i didnt wear the garmets as long as i should of and had a toddler to pick up and hold which i did alot sooner than i should have. scar tissue sucks. avoid it at all costs so make sure your family can help with the lifting of the kids if they are small. ask your doc if you get 'dog ears'if he will redo them in a follow up corrective surgery. dog ears are a little trinagular flap of skin that sometimes sticks out on the side where the scar ends near the flanks. they are impossible to know about until the healing is far enough along that you can unpeel the compression dressing and the scar is healed enough to see if a dog ear is there. dog ears will stick out on the sides when you sit down, kind of like little wings, it wont be noticable when you stand. but most surgeons will correct them with a simple same day outpatient procedure at no charge. but since he is there and you are elsewhere, maybe ask what will happen in that case so you arent incuring additional travel fees. i had to travel back to my surgeon two more times for follow ups on the procedure and to get my dog ears corrected. again, just wanting you to ask some insider questions so you know everything. also, make sure he or someone shows you or your reletive how to remove the drainage tubes. they will need to stay in longer than perhaps your stay there and can be tricky to get out. no doctor will remove them bc another doc put them in. you cant even go to a freaking hospital or urgent care to have them removed. i had to hire a nurse to do mine. hopefully there is a medical person in your extended family who can help with this part which is several weeks down the road after your procedure.

im excited for you and i know you will be happier down the road once things settle after your surgery. i dont want to dampen your enthusiam but id like to add some realistic things to consider since you are traveling a long distance. i too, traveled to get my tummy tuck and had a large area to re shape. i was in good shape when i became pregnant--5'10 and 135 and had a metabolism that let me eat just about anything. i had diabetes in pregnancy and didnt know it. i ended up gaining 90 pounds in just 7 months. my baby was 3 wks premature and 10.5 pounds. my stomach never went back to its shape, even tho much of the rest of me did. so i could not wait to get the tuck and i researched, like you, the best doc for my needs and price. the concern i have for you and i didnt have for me [bc i didnt know any better] was that i thought id be able to travel home much sooner than i really was. i stayed in a hotel and i even hired a nurse to go with me and do my care for the days after. i needed her. i was pulled so tight, i wasnt able to breathe, i was serverely nauseous, i was in alot of pain. yes, i had all the medications but please consider your finances in case you need to stay longer, traveling back right away may not be possible or may be beyond miserable. you will have drainage tubes, they arent pretty or easy to work around clothes when traveling. you will nbeed assistance getting up from a laying down position, to a partial sitting position, to a sitting to a sliding your legs to the side of the bed, you will need help standing and steadying to the bathroom for awhile and help in getting your garmets unhooked at the crotch as you may be too drugged, neausous or in pain to do it yourself, you will want foods around you that are easy to get down during those first hand ful of days after. and youll want to make sure the help you take can help you get up and down and support your weight. make sure you know who to call if its a weekend and there is an issue with trouble breathing or pain. i left the hotel after my first check in with the doc about 4 days after the surgery. i was very slow moving, think sloth like. the nurse drove me home and every turn or acceleration or bump was pretty ruff. it is a surgery that is Worth it, it is. but the name makes it sound less serious than it actually is. another thing i want to add is wear your garmets. for as long if not longer than they tell you too. make them as tight as you can take it. i ditched mine as soon as i could wobble around without them and i ended up with scar tissue that is painful and prevented my nerve endings from growing together--so it is constant neurologia pain. the surgeon tried to go back in a second time to restructure it but it grew back even more, harder, and larger of an area. it has caused dents in my stomach that even though i have a 6 pack now from where he re stitched my muscles back together, i still cannot wear a bikini because of these dents below my belly button. again, i wish you the best and i am not trying to dampen your spirit. i wish someone would have advised me of these things before my surgery. and im putting them out there just so you have the choice to decide how you want to use this info. love n light.

brilliant, AB normal.

lets see, there are those who are born without sensititivy and then those who are just plain narrcisicts. people who cant step outside of their own immediate expereience to consider another view or a limitation different from their own. these are the people who--when you say, im cold--they say--its not cold. they devalue your own personal reality becasue it doesnt match their exact and immediate reality. they arent cold so therefore you shouldnt be cold either. they cant possible imagine how someone could be cold when they arent. they cant possibly imagine why everyone cant cardio two hours a day? the blind, the handicaped, those with pulminary heart disease. i mean, c'mon you lazy quadroplegics, you need to cardio two hours a day. i do. so should you. i cant imagine any other exisitance than my own and you are lazy because you arent exactly like me. this would be comical if not for the fact that these people do have children and they devlaue their kids just as much as they do people who post on here. could you imagine this kind of parent, what they would say to their child who had a learning disability or was dyslexic or had a heatlh problem? they would make them out to be wron/lazy/unintelligent simply becasue they could not relate to anything outside of their immediate experience. let this one go ab normal, tryin to get them to see is like flavor flav intervieiwng einstein. Word.

im reading all comments and need to put this out there: we all have bodies that look a certain way when we're younger. if you havent had a child, you cannot relate to how much your body changes outside the scope of your control. i have always been 125/130 and 5'10 with a super high metabolisim. when i saw larger woman, i too held thoughts that they just didnt take care of themsleves. i thought if they just ate right and exercised they would look weight proportionate. then i became pregnant at 36. i gained 90 pounds in less than 8 months from diabetes. my baby was a month premature and weighed 10.5 pounds. i went from 130 pounds to 225 pounds. after my hormones settled, i still weighed 170 pounds. my stomach was destroyed from the pregnancy. as my body shrunk, the monstrosity of my stretched skin and tissue hung on my stomach like a walrus pouch. i felt shame, anguish, the beauty of my body, this thing ive always relied on to garner me some sort of attention and good feelings out in the world, felt to me anyway--broken. i got a tummy tuck. the scar ran over more than half the circumfrance of my body. it extends all the way back past my hips. a huge area of scar tissue developed on the front of the scar, under my belly button, this grapefruit size area of scartissue prevented my nerve endings [severed during the surgury] to fuse back together. it is four years later. i am in daily nerve pain, buring on the surface of my stomach. the doctor went in initially and cut out the scar tissue. and guess what? it came back, larger and more painful. its like an ice burg and has created a dent on my stomach under my belly button. i spent 10k to fix my stomach and it has a dent in it. the pain in my stomach from the nerve / scar tissue issues means im not doing abdominal exercises. it hurts. after the surgury, i began gaining weight, my hair began falling out. i now had thyroid disease [common after pregnnany]. so skinny white girl looking like a model is now with a sagging metabolism, a big belly and extra settled fat along my back and hips, with the rest of me skinny. why am i making you suffer thru my story? because not a single one of us on here can know what our body is going to do after having a child, how badly it is going to stretch out, how much loss of control we are going to experience in trying to rein it back in to its former shape. not a single voice on here--and that goes for the guy and the chick--needs to be stating their small minded opinion about what one woman should be doing instead of cosmetic procedures. your body isnt her body and no woman [or man] for that matter should not conceptually grasp how the age old issue of women/fat/post pregnancy issues are relevant for a reason: our bodies change. and for many there is only so much you can do. i exercise 4x a week, i consume only 1200 calories a day, and still when i sit down i have fat that spreads up out of my jeans. its depressing. and no judgement ever should be given a women's body who has given birth.