Advertise
With Us

Click here to request more information.
OC Family reaches:

• Active & educated parents
• Growing families
• And more...

Your Body After Pregnancy

Ohhh baby! Post-pregnancy firming and toning may involve more than diet and exercise. By Dr. Angela ChampionPublished: December, 2008

Print This Article Email This Article RSS Subscribe

Some of you may already know that I am not only a doctor, I’m also the mother of two children. As a fellow mom, I can share in the concerns of the belly stretching and getting quite large and wondering what will it look like AFTER the baby is born. It may look pretty good after the first; not bad after my second; but after a third or fourth? The answer: probably not so great.     Pregnancy changes a women’s body in many ways, most notably in the breasts and tummy. And the more times your body goes through pregnancy, the less likely it will return to the way it looked before! The change a woman’s body goes through during pregnancy is truly awesome, but leaves many women frustrated after the joy of a newborn comes and goes. Plastic surgeons, including myself, enjoy and take pride in re-sculpting a post-pregnancy body to help women look and feel their very best about themselves.     In medicine, very few things can be said that are absolute in every case. That being said, I have never seen or heard of a woman who did not lose some volume in their breasts following pregnancy, especially if they breast fed their baby. During pregnancy and breast feeding, women’s breast glands become significantly enlarged due to hormonal changes.  After hormones return to more normal levels, the glands not only go back to their original size, but they actually shrink smaller. Combining this with loss of skin elasticity makes for smaller, droopier breasts following pregnancy.     So why can’t our tummy deflate and shrink to smaller than before? Well, we’re not that lucky. Not only does our stomach skin lose its elasticity by stretching for nine months, but the underlying muscles actually pull apart, decreasing support over time. This results in overhanging loose skin, sometimes with stretch marks, that pooches out more after we eat. Great, huh?     So now we have our bundles of joy, have lost the baby weight and are feeling great! Then we look in the mirror and think what happened? It’s just not the same anymore. And you’re right, it’s not.     The good news is with diet, exercise and a little help from plastic surgery, we are able to reshape and contour most post pregnancy bodies to look as good, if not better, than before the babies. With adding a little volume to the breasts and/or removing stretched skin we can create fuller, more lifted breasts. Then we remove the excess skin of the tummy and repair the underlying muscles, creating the well-toned abdomen with the support you had before pregnancy. The result? A more confident YOU, looking as great as you feel, even AFTER having babies! Angela Champion, M.D. is a Plastic Surgeon in Newport Beach specializing in cosmetic surgery of the face, breast and body. She also provides Botox, fillers and professional skin care. CONTACT US: 2121 San Joaquin Hills Road, Newport Beach 949.640.4005 achampionmd.com

SEARCH THE SITE