Tummy Tuck Has Given Me my Confidence Back, Not Just my Body - La Jolla, CA

I had a tummy tuck approximately four months ago as I write this review (March 2012), and it was fantastic. It has given me back confidence, more than I even thought I had lost. I gave birth to twins seven years ago, and my abdomen was not going to recover. My skin was stretched in the front and on the sides, I had rectus diastasis (my abdominal muscles were separated), and I had weird tethering and overhanging pouchy skin from my C-section scar. These were not things one can fix by simply "losing the baby weight". I had resigned myself to it, but was very unhappy and self-conscious about my appearance all the time. I mean it - All. The. Time. Out in public, or alone in my bathroom, no matter what I wore, no matter how I tried to suck in my stomach and camouflage it. I spent about 4 years thinking seriously about having a tummy tuck. I did lots of reading and research and met several doctors over that time. I stressed about what would happen to my husband and children if I died on the operating table way more than I thought about what would happen if the surgery succeeded. But here's the important thing - yes it was expensive, and yes it hurt a lot the first few days (many reviews will give you more details about the pain and the recovery), but I no longer feel like a freak. I look normal. NORMAL. I don't look like a supermodel, because the rest of me doesn't look like a supermodel. But I don't look like an oddly misshapen six-month pregnant woman anymore. My abdomen is flat and looks normal. I have worn pants, shorts, and dresses, and I no longer feel like my abdomen walks into the room and attracts all the attention. After all the fear and stress about making the decision, the moment that affirmed for me that it was the right decision was when I went back to my doctor for my 24-hour follow-up, in pain and hobbling bent over like an old woman, and they sat me in the exam chair and took off my binder and bandages ... I could see down the front of my body all the way to my crotch. There was no big saggy belly in my way for the first time since I was pregnant. I cried, I was so happy. I realized at that moment just how deeply I had felt like a freak, and how much of my own confidence and self-worth I had lost. I wish I had really understood beforehand just how much of a difference it would make to me mentally to not have to feel that way anymore. I'm not saying it was a right or a wrong way to feel - my misshapen abdomen did carry and give birth to some miraculous babies, after all, and I am so, so grateful - but the fact is that I felt awful about my abdomen, and consequently myself. And now I don't.