Before & After

Giving birth to new life and welcoming a tiny new person to the family can be a major high point in one's life. When it's all over and you're back home, perhaps back to work, and life resumes to its normal shape and routine again, you might start to notice that the youthful figure you took for granted has changed. Sometimes consistent exercising combined with a healthy diet will restore YOUR shape. Sometimes it will restore it, but only partially.

As the years pass and life keeps happening, women's breasts sag for several reasons:

Sometimes, we find ourselves stuck with a larger abdomen than we want and a body profile that looks older than we feel. When diet and exercise have no further effect, you may begin considering plastic surgery. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons compiles annual statistics of which procedures have been performed most often that year. For 2006, the most recent year for which their statistics are available, both liposuction and tummy tucks are in the top five. In 2005, 303,000 people had liposuction and 146,000 had a tummy tuck.

When the breasts are larger and heavier, they sag more readily and lose their youthful shape and positioning. A breast lift (known as a mastopexy) restores that shape and positioning without adding any volume to the breast size. It can also reduce enlarged areolas. Your body profile will be more uplifted and younger-looking.

Liposuction combined with a tummy tuck (abdominoplasty) is sometimes referred to as a Mommy Makeover. These two procedures approach the problem from different angles and complement each other to give you a very satisfactory, slimmed-down result.