35-year Old Getting Restylane Silk in Lips for First Time - Philadelphia, PA

True Story: I’ve been getting Botox injections since I was 27, and filler since I was 30. I'm not ashamed to admit it: I LOVE the effects of Botox (and later Dysport), and dermal-filler.

With all of my many injections, I’ve tried to keep things very natural looking; smooth forehead, fuller cheeks and temples. Even though there are a million things I could criticize and scrutinize about myself (we are always our own worst enemy) – for some reason my lips never bothered me.

And then Kylie happened -- and a bigger-lip curiosity was instilled.

As you can see, my natural-born lips are pretty average; not too big, not too small. But what would I look like if they were a little plumper? What would they feel like? Would I wear more lipstick? Would I feel more confident?

It was time to find out.

Full-disclosure: 3-days prior to this I had a suspicious spot removed from my bottom lip that needed to be tested for skin-cancer. (Why were you so stupid about tanning, Younger Self?!!) The results came back negative (thankfully!!), but in the meantime I was left with a nasty scab on my mouth for about a week. Perhaps this was not the ideal time to experiment with lip injections, but once I had it in my head that I wanted to try it, I WANTED TO TRY IT.

Day of: After having every laser treatment in the book, chemical peels galore, and more needle-pricks than a pin-cushion, I assumed that any discomfort associated with lip injections would be negligible.

I was tough, I could handle it.

I was wrong!

Sarah, About Face's injector, warned me that lip injections hurt, and recommended that I should apply topical numbing cream for about 20-minutes prior to treatment. But, I thought I was really tough and didn’t need it.

Since I didn’t use numbing cream, Sarah had me hold some ice-packs against my lips for a few seconds to help camouflage any discomfort with the injections. She made the first injection, and….

GOOD LORD THIS HURT!!!

In order to have lips come out looking natural, teeny amounts of filler are deposited all throughout the lips. I was truly hoping this was procedure was going to be only a couple of injections, but to treat me properly I needed something like 20-little injections. I tried so hard to be brave, but the tears silently streaming down my face gave me away.

When Sarah was about 70% through with 1-vial of Restylane Silk, I had to have her stop because I couldn’t take anymore.

Considering I was stuck a bunch of times, the fact that I only had 2-bruises seems somewhat miraculous.

Sarah told me to ice my lips as much as I could for the rest of the day to help prevent the bruises from getting worse, and also to help prevent swelling.

For the rest of the day my lips felt tingly from the numbing agent in the filler, but I felt fine, and thought I looked fine.

Night of treatment: When I got home from work, approximately 6-hours after injections, I thought that my lips looked relatively normal. Over the course of the next few hours however, my lips started to throb and every time I looked in the mirror they seemed to be growing.

After doing some homework, and being mentally prepared per Sarah, I KNEW that lips are very likely to swell after injections. In order to help curb that I popped a few Aleve and held a bag of frozen veggies to my lips for about an hour.
Day After Lip Injections: The next morning I woke up with super-swollen lips. My lips were huge, sore, bruised, and scabbed from the lip-biopsy. (I’m really doing a great job selling this treatment, huh?) There was nothing to do about it at this point, so I just went with it and tried to apply a dark lip-color to cancel out the bruises.

Fortunately, the bruising was mostly on the inside of my lips, so with my mouth closed you could barely see anything. (Sorry for the blurry pictures, everything was taken on my cell-phone!)

2-Days After Lip Injections: Still swollen, still bruised, but definitely getting better.

3-Days After Lip Injections: There are still some residual signs of the injections, but if anything the scab from the biopsy is the most noticeable.

4-Days After Lip Injections: It appears this is when I stopped taking daily photos, which makes me believe that the bruising and swelling was significantly down. (The only reason I wouldn’t have taken a picture would be if there was nothing to record.)

5-days After Lip Injections: Bruises are gone, swelling is gone, just in time for my friends’ wedding! No one commented, so I assumed the goal was accomplished: subtle lip improvement.


1-week After Lip Injections: The initial discomfort couldn’t have been that bad because I was already planning to go back and use up the remaining product. This time I wasn’t so cocky though, and I made sure to say YES to the numbing-cream! It actually made a huge difference, I could still feel the injections, but they were at least tolerable now.

There was only about 30% of the vial left for my “touch up”, and at this point I can’t even remember if I got swollen or not – which makes me think I didn’t. (If my lips had blown-up a second time, I think I would remember.)

Now; 5-months After Lip Injections: No more bruising, no more biopsy scabs, and very natural looking results.

So, did lip injections make me feel more confident?
Like any good thing (at least for me), it’s so easy to get spoiled and take it for granted. For the first few dress-up occasions I had after the lip-injections, I definitely felt empowered to go bolder with my lip-makeup.

But on a day-to-day basis? I liked that my lips looked better without me having to do anything to them, but not worrying about my lips left me time to instead fret about my eyelashes (have they reached their peak Latisse results?!) and my split-ends (is it time for a trim?!). Being a girl can lead to endless self-criticisms, but I would say that overall having improved lips did make me feel better. On those lazy days where I all I did was wash my face and throw on sunscreen before running out the door, I felt instantly more put-together having a plumper-pout.

Did I wear lipstick more often?
For the first few weeks — when having fuller lips was still an exciting novelty — I tried various lip colors and products. Playing dress-up with my lips was extra-fun in the beginning, but then I largely went back to my usual, sheer Baby-Lips products. Because my lips looked better, any lip product I used instantly looked better too.

How does it feel to have filler in your lips?
Before I had the treatment I thought that lip injections would feel like the other facial injections – when you touched the treated area, you would be able to feel the lumps of dermal-filler inside. (The eye can’t see it, but for example when I touch my cheeks I can definitely feel the dermal-filler that’s underneath, giving structure to the skin.)

With my lips, after the initial swelling went down I couldn’t feel anything different in my lips. Weird, but perhaps because there are such small quantities placed throughout the entire mouth, it integrates better with the existing tissue. (As opposed to cheeks, where bigger quantities are deposited in each spot.)

How much do lip injections cost?

The first vial of filler is $650, and any additional vials used at the same visit are $550. I would be open to getting 2-vials next time, but 1-vial was perfect for my first time.

Can someone kissing you feel the lip-filler?
No. I can’t feel that the product is in my lips, and no one else can either.

Would I do it again?
As mentioned before, my lips are not really a huge worry for me. But, with a pending wedding in the works I would definitely do this again about a month before that so that my wedding pictures are extra gorgeous. :)

ALSO: In my memory, the bruising and swelling was much worse than it actually was. Writing this is forcing me to revisit all of the pictures I took, and my memory of everything is 20x worse than what I actually looked like. The down-time with this treatment is really not bad!