1st Time Juvederm to my Lips

Revive Salon: Carmel Valley - I've never really had a problem with my lips. I've always had a good amount of fullness to them, but I have seen a bunch of my friends do it recently and really liked the look that they were achieving. I had mentioned it to my boyfriend a couple months before Christmas and he said if I wanted to get them done he would pay for it for my Christmas present. I figured why not just to try it once and see what the fuss was about. I had to schedule my appointment about a month and a half out because the salon I use for my normal Botox injections is a pretty busy one and the girl that I had been recommended to was booked that far out. My mom had done it previously and told me how painful the injections were along with a few friends of mine so I went in thinking it was going to be super painful. I even went as far as borrowing a medical grade numbing cream which my friend had used for her daughters injection sites when she was getting chemo treatments. She had told me to put it on 45 minutes before my appointment and surprisingly it kept wearing off before I ever got to my lip appointment. I put it on three times and it just didn't work for me. When I got to my appointment everyone was super nice, got me pumped up for my appointment since they could tell I was nervous. The first thing Mary did was go over the procedure and told me about how long I should expect it to take and then she got this jar of numbing cream which was the consistency of Vaseline. She got the tongue depressor stick and layered it all over my lips. She put on some relaxing music and then left and let it set in for about 8-10 minutes. When she came back we wiped the cream off my lips and she went to work. She let me know before she was going to be injecting each spot and it surprisingly was not nearly as painful as I had imagined it to be. It was also a little weird because you could hear the liquid going into the lips. She had warned me that one side normally hurts more than the other and my left side happened to be that one. The outer corners and bottom lip were not very painful at all but the top center where my cupids bow was was the most painful ( and still not terrible bad) with the left side more so. It was done within 10 minutes and you could immediately see the results. At first I was a bit shocked because I normally go for a more natural look and I was afraid that I had done something I regretted. It took a minute to get used to, but the fullness of the lips was gorgeous. The bruising and swelling started happening within the first 30 minutes and that lasted a full 24 hr day. I had to go to work that night (bartending), and I definitely wouldn't recommend that because it's very noticeable. Your lips get much more swollen than what they settle into. The second day was still pretty painful but nothing that I couldn't handle. I just iced them a lot which helped. By the third day a lot of the swelling had gone down and I was really liking the look of them. It's now been four months and I absolutely love them. It wasn't a drastic change at all just a slight fuller look. One thing I did notice was that my lips would become chapped very often the first couple months after I got them done, so get yourself some Chapstick. Sometimes I catch myself just staring at them. The first time around apparently, your lips only look fuller there's not a huge huge change, the second time around is when you're adding volume to the lips. I know because my sister has gotten them done a couple times and the second time around is when it actually starts to stay a lot longer too. The first injection should last around 6 to 9 months and then subsequent injections can leave a longer lasting results. I'm not sure if mine are going to go down completely but if they do I may do one more round. I'm not trying to change the shape of my lipes or get them really big, I just would like to keep them where they are right now. Mary had told me as well that you can't really change the shape of your lips, what you're born with is what you have, you can only make them fuller. I agree with that, because when the girls go overboard on the injections, lip shape still stays the same, they just look exaggerated and like the injection has almost gone into the skin around their lips which gives it that duck face like look. A good rule of thumb that I like to use is look at the person actually doing your injections. If they have that exaggerated fake look, then that's obviously something that they personally are OK with. I like to try and pick someone who doesn't look like they have had a whole lot done to their face because I still want to look natural myself. I love the results I got with Mary, and if I feel the need to go back one more time I will use her again.