5 Kids Later...finally a Mommy Makeover

It's been a while since I've posted on here! Life got busy with the weddings, family visiting, and school starting (I homeschool).
It's been just over three months since surgery. Last week I decided to try no compression garment again and see how it goes. It didn't hurt this time. So yay! By the third day or so, my skin feels more sore. Which seems weird. But I just wear a compression of sorts and it helps.
My lipo areas seem to finally NOT be hurting anymore. Well, maybe a TINY bit. But it's so nice! My right side is almost completely down in swelling, but for some reason, the left side is more swollen. It always has been. It's interesting. I have almost all feeling back to my right side now (sort of). Left side is a bit more numb. Just seems behind on the healing overall. But the improvement (both in look and pain/sensation) is really noticeable. I don't feel the pinpricks constantly anymore either. I think that was my nerves healing.
It still feels a little weird to twist and turn my sides. I can do it just fine, but it's not 100% normal feeling yet. Maybe I've gotten used to being careful for so long and just need to get used to being normal again.
I need to work out more. I control my weight by what I eat, and I feel like I'm lacking in cardio and strength. It's so much more motivating to work out now too, now that I'll get even more tone.
I looooove my results and love my doctor/office gals. I don't regret one little bit that I did this. It's been worth alllll the healing time that it's taken. It has definitely shocked me at how long healing takes!!
Oh, and I've gained maybe 2 lbs in the last week or two. I think the calories I was burning by healing is wearing off. It's another motivation to work out more. (I like to try to keep my weight not fluctuating more than about 5 lbs.) So, hopefully I can manage to go to bed early enough so I'll wake up with more energy to work out. Haha.
Hope the rest of you are doing well! I need to check in on everyone!

I went a week or so without wearing my compression garment or shapewear. I didn't wear it at night either. And, I noticed constant swelling around my waist, never going away, no matter how lazy I was. Hehe. My belly skin (not muscles) felt a lot more sore too constantly. I think healing takes a long time, and it takes a while for the skin to fully heal (from so much of it being detached) to get it to the point like it was prior to surgery. So, I've decided to wear my compression garment for a bit longer for comfort's sake. It's amazing how it can help with swelling! Cause it's gone back down since then.

However, my love handles are still swollen (still, still, still, cause it's going to last forever!). They have been itchy a whole lot more recently, which is a good sign for healing, right. The area is still pretty numb (as is my lower belly). My right side is less swollen than the left, so it makes it easier to figure out what is swelling exactly. Even if it stayed out it is now, it's better than it was! But I'm super excited to see what it'll end up like. Doctor said around six months the swelling should be down. And the overall swelling can last up to a year of coming and going.

My scars continue looking better since I stopped the scar treatment. Haha. Not sure if I didn't use it right (I was supposed to put it on 4 times a day and often only put it on twice) or if I just reacted weird to it. Either way, I don't think I'll be trying it again. My scars are getting way less red. Excited to see what it'll look in a year!

I think I'm at 10 weeks today. My husband was sick last week, and anytime he's home, it feels like the weekend. So I was totally thrown off and thought I was 10 weeks last week. Haha. I'm smart like that.

A couple things:

I stopped wearing shapewear and compression garment almost all the time. I will rarely put one on. I've been on my period, and it just hasn't been comfortable to wear it. While nice, I'm more swollen constantly now. Even when I take it easy and eat clean, I'm still swollen. So, I'll probably start wearing it again to see is it helps with the swelling now. The swelling seems more than just bloating related, but maybe that's all it is.

Second thing is my scars. Initially after surgery my scars looked great. Then I got the complimentary laser treatment, and they (obviously) swelled up big and red and sore. Then immediately after that, he had me use a synthetic vitamin D and steroid cream to treat my scars. I had a couple strange things happen with my scar (like a little wound opening on my breast) that part of my brain was telling me was due to the scar treatment while the other part of my brain said that makes no sense. It's not the scar treatment. So I kept using it. My tt scar got a lot flatter and smoother. BUT all scars were very red. They hadn't gone back to how they were prior to the laser treatment, but I assumed maybe it's just part of the scar healing process. The dr saw them and even commented on how red they were, but said it's because I'm so fair skinned. I didn't remember doing that before, like with my c-section scar. I did nothing with my c-section scars (both times), and they healed into a faint silvery line all on its own. (Then again, I had a flap of skin covering it so maybe I didn't look and see and maybe they did get super red too.)

Anyway, so I decided no more scar treatment. I want to see what my body will do itself because it did great the other times...at least by the end. I'll use Bio Oil, so I guess that's not totally letting my body do it on its own. Ha. It's been maybe a week or two. And my scars already look a lot less red. They look like a deep purple almost. My breast incisions on the bottom (horizontal ones) hadn't flattened out like my tt ones had, and I'm noticing they seem to be starting to smooth out more. I don't know if I was having a reaction to the scar treatment or what exactly. But now I feel like I'm healing a lot more normally when it comes to the scars.

I don't know how obvious it is in the photos, but I'm more swollen now. I'll be glad when that goes away! Hope you're all healing well now. :) I had a second wedding I did and have been busy finishing up the wedding video and haven't been on RealSelf at all like usual, so I need to catch up!