Loving my Results from TT After 4 1/2 Months - Toronto, ON

I had my TT done on Nov. 21, 2012 and the result has been amazing beside the ugly scar from it but I'm hoping it will fade in a few years.
Here's a little about myself:
Age: 33 Height: 5'3" Weight: 113 lbs (before TT) 105 lbs (after TT for a few weeks) then 110 lbs until now
3 kids and breast fed them all for about a year for each
I'm not a big girl, in fact I don't look too bad in clothes when I sucked my stomach in but the stretch marks and wrinkly skin on my belly are horrible. I knew I could not live with it and felt so insecure about my belly all the time. Getting intimate with my hubby is the worse. I would not show my belly and would always wear a skirt to cover it or I would have to turn off the light so the room has to be really dark. The stretch marks don’t bother me as much as the loose skin.Anyway, I went to see him again for the 2nd time and asked him if I should also do some Lipo on my hips (love handles). He said that I don't need to because he will try to extend the scar further out to the hips so that he could get rid of some of the love handles. Ladies/Gents, I'm telling you PLEASE considered doing lipo on your hips as well because I regret it so bad that I didn't do it. My stomach is really flat and no more loose skin after TT but I still got the love handles when I wear jeans and pants which bothers me so much. I had recently went for a BA and decided to do Lipo on my hips as well. I'm now 2 1/2 weeks post-op on BA and Tumescent Lipo on the hips. I'm still swollen and haven't seen a difference yet. Anyway, that is another story which I will write a review on separately later on when I have time.

As for TT, recovery time was really long for me; I think it took me 2 months to actually feel 100% myself again. I still have some swelling at the end of the day after 4 1/2 months. My swelling was never too bad though. My doctor is the one of the doctors that did not require his patient to wear a garment after TT. But I do have to wear one for my Lipo now. The pain for TT wasn’t that bad for me. When I woke up from the surgery, I just felt really sore like I just did 1000 push-ups the day before. I didn’t feel any pain at all on the incision.

My PS allows his patients to stay overnight at his private clinic for TT and BA. There were two nurses there to attend us (myself and two other girls who had their BA done that same day). My surgery was at 7am but I think it didn’t start until 8am and they called my hubby at around 10:30am to tell him that everything went well. I woke up from the anaesthesia at around noon or so and was put on IV the whole time until I went home the next morning.
I had one drain only and it didn’t bother me that much for the first few days but then it started to sting. It was so irritable and uncomfortable that at time I just wanted to rip the darn drain out lol. I got my drain taken out on my first week post-op appointment. Oh boy, it made such a difference to my recovery. I felt so much more human again. Having a drain on you and you could see the blood running through the tube was definitely not a good sight. I tried to hide it from my hubby because I didn’t want to gross him out. Even though he was so supportive and had been a great help to me, I still didn’t want to let him see me like that. He took 2 ½ weeks off from work to help me with my recovery.
It took me 6 weeks to finally stand up straight without feeling the tightness like a pulling sensation on my upper abdomen. I stopped my pain meds on the day 3 post-op and didn’t take anything at all after that. I slept on my Lazy-boy’s recliner for two weeks and slept on my bed with two pillows on my head and 1 pillow underneath my legs for another 4 weeks. After 6 weeks, I could sleep with my legs straight and only 1 pillow on my head (that’s the way I like to sleep).
Swelling comes and goes even until now 4 ½ months later but not as bad. My swelling never made me looked 3 months pregnant or anything like that. My incision heals very well but now the scar is getting wider and looking darker. I didn’t really use any scar therapy except bi-oil. I know, I should invest in other scar creams. I didn’t have any infection or seroma…lucky me?. I had no complications at all.
My belly button’s scar is dark too and I don’t know if I like my new bb or not. Every time, I look at it I could see it’s a TT belly button. I could see it’s not a real one and it just makes me conscious about it that people can tell that I had my stomach done. I kept it a secret for 4 ½ months from my friends but I think I’m going to come out clean. I felt so bad to not telling them the truth when the TT topic came up in our group conversation. It’s really hard to tell friends about doing surgeries because they tend to judge you and have too many opinions about it. I’m pretty sure they all would want to do it as well if they had the money. I was lucky to have an option with my finance to be able to spend that much money on my TT, BA, and LIPO. I really hope they won’t look at me differently like I’m a plastic surgery girl or something. It’s funny, how I fear to tell people around me than the surgery itself lol.