Becoming a mother can be one of life's most rewarding experiences, but the physical demands of pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding can put an extreme amount of stress on your body.
When the whirlwind of pregnancy and breastfeeding has passed, many women are eager to feel like themselves again: to regain their confidence, their energy, and their sense of self.
That's where mommy makeovers come in.
Mommy makeovers are custom combinations of surgical procedures tailored to a woman's specific goals, designed to help her recapture her feminine, pre-pregnancy silhouette, and feel confident and beautiful in her own skin again.
WHAT GOES INTO A MOMMY MAKEOVER?
In short, whatever you'd like.
Unlike cookie-cutter procedures, modern mommy makeovers combine multiple procedures tailored specifically to restore your body after childbirth and breastfeeding. Whether you're dealing with separated abdominal muscles, deflated breasts, stubborn fat deposits, or loose skin, you can select from a comprehensive menu of surgical and non-surgical options to create your personalized transformation plan.
The foundation typically includes procedures addressing your breasts, abdomen, and body contour, but you control which specific procedures match your goals.
Some women need only core procedures like a tummy tuck and breast augmentation, while others benefit from comprehensive transformations including additional body contouring, intimate area rejuvenation, or facial procedures.
CORE PROCEDURES THAT FORM THE FOUNDATION
Most mommy makeovers center on three primary areas dramatically affected by pregnancy: your breasts, abdomen, and body contour.
Tummy tuck (abdominoplasty)
Tummy tuck surgery provides the most comprehensive solution for post-pregnancy abdominal concerns. This procedure simultaneously repairs the separation of abdominal muscles that affects many mothers while removing excess stretched skin and eliminating stretch marks in your lower abdomen.
During surgery, your plastic surgeon sutures your separated rectus abdominis muscles back together along the midline through a technique called plication, restoring your abdominal wall's functional integrity. The procedure then removes the hanging skin and underlying fat through a hip-to-hip incision strategically placed low enough to hide beneath underwear and swimwear. Your belly button is repositioned to a natural location, and the remaining skin is redraped for a smooth, firm contour.
This is the only procedure that can address the permanent structural damage pregnancy causes to your core. No amount of crunches can repair separated muscles or remove excess skin.
Breast augmentation
Breast augmentation restores the fullness that many mothers commonly lose after breastfeeding.
Pregnancy and nursing cause dramatic breast volume changes. Breasts swell during pregnancy, expand further with milk production, then often deflate once you stop breastfeeding, leaving them smaller than before.
This procedure uses silicone or saline implants to recreate upper breast fullness, improve symmetry, and restore your desired cup size. Your surgeon places the implants through discreet incisions either beneath your breast tissue or under your chest muscle.
Some surgeons also offer fat transfer augmentation using liposuction-harvested fat for a more natural look and feel.
Breast lift (mastopexy)
Compared to augmentation, breast lift surgery addresses sagging rather than volume loss.
If pregnancy and breastfeeding left your breasts drooping with downward-pointing nipples, a lift repositions your breast tissue to a higher, more youthful location. The surgeon removes excess stretched skin, reshapes your breast mound into a perkier contour, and relocates your nipple-areolar complex to the center of your breast where it belongs.
Breast augmentation with lift
This combined approach addresses both deflation and sagging.
Trying to compensate for sagging by using larger implants alone typically fails because weakened, stretched tissue can't support the weight long-term. This comprehensive approach first removes excess skin and lifts your breast tissue, then adds implants to restore lost volume, creating both the perkiness and fullness you desire in a single surgery.
Breast reduction
Breast reduction serves women whose breasts remained overly large after pregnancy, causing shoulder, neck, and back pain or creating disproportionate figures. This procedure removes excess breast tissue and fat while simultaneously lifting, always combining reduction with reshaping for optimal results.
Liposuction
Liposuction serves as your body contouring finishing touch, removing stubborn fat deposits that persist despite returning to your pre-pregnancy weight. Pregnancy often causes fat redistribution to areas resistant to diet and exercise: your flanks, hips, thighs, back, and arms.
Using small incisions and thin cannulas (hollow tubes), your surgeon suctions out unwanted fat cells permanently.
It's important to say here that liposuction is a sculpting technique, not a weight loss method.
It works best when you're within a few pounds of your ideal weight and need targeted refinement of specific areas. It cannot tighten loose skin or repair separated muscles, which is why it's often combined with tummy tucks rather than used alone for significant abdominal concerns.
ADDITIONAL PROCEDURES TO CUSTOMIZE YOUR TRANSFORMATION
Beyond the core foundation, you can add specialized procedures addressing specific concerns or extending your transformation to other body areas.
Brazilian butt lift (BBL)
All the rage in recent years, the Brazilian butt lift enhances your buttocks while simultaneously removing unwanted fat from other areas.
It creates balanced, hourglass proportions by harvesting excess fat from your abdomen, thighs, flanks, or lower back through liposuction, then strategically injecting it into your buttocks to restore volume and shape lost to pregnancy weight changes.
This hourglass mommy makeover addresses both your front (flatter abdomen) and back (enhanced curves) for comprehensive body transformation.
One note: You'll need sufficient donor fat available, and the procedure may require staging separately from other mommy makeover components due to positioning requirements during recovery. You cannot sit directly on your buttocks or lie on your back for several weeks.
Arm lift (brachioplasty)
Arm lift removes the loose "bat wing" skin hanging from your upper arms after pregnancy weight fluctuations. If exercise hasn't tightened this area and you feel self-conscious wearing sleeveless clothing, this procedure excises excess skin and fat from your underarm to just above your elbow.
Thigh lift (thighplasty)
Thigh lift addresses loose inner or outer thigh skin that may cause chafing, irritation, or discomfort. This procedure removes excess skin and stubborn fat, creating smoother, more contoured thighs as part of comprehensive lower body transformation. Inner thigh lifts are most common, though outer thigh and circumferential options exist.
Labiaplasty and vaginal rejuvenation
These procedures restore your intimate areas after childbirth. Many women don't realize these can be included in mommy makeovers, yet childbirth often causes changes below the bikini line that affect comfort and confidence.
Labiaplasty reshapes or reduces enlarged, asymmetrical, or protruding labial tissue that may cause discomfort during exercise, sitting, or intercourse. Vaginoplasty tightens your vaginal canal walls to restore tone and sensation after delivery-related laxity.
These procedures address concerns that significantly affect many mothers, yet remain less openly discussed than breast and abdominal changes.
Body lifts
Body lifts provide comprehensive solutions for massive skin laxity after significant weight loss or multiple pregnancies. A lower body lift (also called belt lift or circumferential abdominoplasty) addresses your abdomen, buttocks, hips, and outer thighs simultaneously, removing excess skin circumferentially around your lower torso, more extensive than a standard tummy tuck alone.
An upper body lift targets your upper back, lateral chest, and arms. A total body lift combines both, typically performed in stages, 2-3 surgeries spaced 3-6 months apart for safety.
Facial procedures
Facial procedures address what's sometimes called "mommy face," premature facial aging from pregnancy stress and sleep deprivation.
Injectable treatments like Botox smooth stress-related wrinkles, while dermal fillers restore facial volume lost during pregnancy weight fluctuations. Combining facial and body procedures creates comprehensive face and body makeover transformations.
HOW MOMMY MAKEOVER PROCEDURES WORK TOGETHER
The beauty of mommy makeovers is they allow you to address multiple concerns simultaneously through a single surgery, one anesthesia session, and one recovery period.
Tummy tuck and breast procedures
These procedures together restore both your upper and lower body simultaneously, creating the balanced, proportional figure surgery alone in one area cannot achieve.
The classic mommy makeover pairs tummy tuck with breast augmentation, addressing the two most common post-pregnancy concerns: deflated breasts and abdominal muscle separation with loose skin.
Liposuction enhances tummy tuck results
Liposuction sculpts areas the tummy tuck doesn't address. While your tummy tuck repairs separated muscles and removes excess skin, liposuction simultaneously contours your flanks, hips, back, and thighs for 360-degree transformation.
This creates smooth transitions between treated areas with no visible end points. Your entire torso appears harmoniously contoured rather than having one dramatically improved area adjacent to unchanged zones.
Better planning for better results
By planning and completing these procedures all at once, you can avoid looking top-heavy or bottom-heavy due to uneven planning or spacing out your procedures.
Your surgeon assesses your overall figure to ensure breast size complements your new waistline, creating natural, harmonious proportions. Some women add Brazilian butt lift to balance enhanced breast volume with lower body curves for hourglass silhouettes. Others combine breast reduction with body contouring to create more proportional figures.
You only have to recover once
Maybe best of all, you only have to recover once. You heal from all of the procedures simultaneously, and you can get back to the daily activities that you love, rather than having to juggle multiple start-stops with staggered surgeries.
It also costs less: one set of facility fees, anesthesia costs, and pre-operative workups rather than paying these expenses multiple times. The savings with a mommy makeover can be up to 30-40% compared to separate procedures.
DR. SCHWARTZ’S SIGNATURE TECHNIQUES AND APPROACH
Beverly Hills-based plastic surgeon Dr. Jaime S. Schwartz, MD, FACS is a national leader in mommy makeovers, and he is behind several innovations in the field.
Background and credentials
Dr. Schwartz holds board certification from the American Board of Plastic Surgery and serves as Associate Clinical Professor of Surgery at USC Keck School of Medicine's Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. He's been name named a RealSelf Top 100 Core Plastic Surgeon and has received Super Doctors Southern California Rising Stars honors. He's won Best Mommy Makeover Surgery at The Aesthetic Show Awards along with Best Overall Transformation and Best Breast Revision awards.
Most significantly, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons selected Dr. Schwartz as one of only 10 plastic surgeons in the entire United States chosen to develop clinical practice guidelines for breast surgeries, including evidence-based guidelines for breast reconstruction and quality performance measures.
Breast LipoLift®: Dr. Schwartz’s pioneering innovation
Dr. Schwartz created and pioneered the Breast LipoLift® technique, a minimally invasive approach using precision liposuction to reshape, lift, reduce, and contour breasts. He developed this innovation when treating a patient with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (a connective tissue disorder) who needed breast surgery with minimal complications. The results proved so successful that this technique became his signature procedure.
Unlike traditional breast surgery that excises tissue with scalpels, LipoLift® uses liposuction to remove excess breast tissue while selectively preserving nerves, blood vessels, and lymphatic vessels. This allows Dr. Schwartz to precisely measure and correct asymmetry using Vectra 3D imaging technology, removing exactly the right amount of tissue for optimal symmetry, something harder to achieve with traditional surgical excision.
Internal Waist Trainer™: Permanent waist reshaping
Dr. Schwartz's proprietary Internal Waist Trainer™ technique revolutionizes tummy tuck results by restructuring your waist internally. Traditional tummy tucks typically remove Scarpa's Fascia (the strong connective tissue layer beneath your skin). Dr. Schwartz instead preserves and uses this layer to create permanent internal waist cinching.
By suturing your own fascial layer strategically, he creates an effect simulating wearing an external waist trainer, but permanent and internal. This simultaneously reduces abdominal girth, creates more defined hourglass contouring, lifts your lower abdominal region providing additional pubic and thigh lift effect, and delivers complete permanent midsection reshaping using your body's own tissues.
Schwartz Rapid Recuperation™: Faster, gentler recovery
Dr. Schwartz developed comprehensive protocols enabling the fastest possible recovery while maintaining safety.
His proprietary approach includes Gentle Anesthesia using TIVA (Total Intravenous Anesthesia), which eliminates breathing tubes and anesthetic gases, virtually eliminating nausea and vomiting in over 98% of patients while enabling quicker anesthesia recovery. Some patients feel well enough to go out to dinner the next evening.
His advanced pain management protocols using special oral medications and longer-acting numbing injectables mean most patients only need Tylenol and Advil after procedures, minimizing opioid use. Combined with early mobilization and active recovery encouraging walking and movement immediately after surgery, these protocols promote circulation and faster healing.
Results include many patients returning to light work in just 7-10 days — significantly faster than traditional approaches — with reduced complications and bruising.
Schwartz Scar Secure™: Science-based scar minimization
As Principal Investigator for an FDA clinical trial on reducing and correcting poorly healed scars, Dr. Schwartz brings published peer-reviewed research on wound healing to his scar management approach.
His Schwartz Scar Secure™ protocols combine advanced suturing techniques, strategic incision placement (low on your bikini line for tummy tucks, concealed in natural folds for breasts), and medical-grade scar therapy before, during, and after surgery.
Complete procedure menu for customization
Dr. Schwartz offers the full spectrum of mommy makeover options including all tummy tuck variations (standard, mini, extended, Fleur de lis, reverse), comprehensive breast procedures (augmentation, lift, combination augmentation-mastopexy, reduction), specialized nipple procedures (reduction, inverted nipple correction), Brazilian butt lift, SmoothLipo body contouring, and non-surgical enhancements like Botox, dermal fillers, microdermabrasion, and skin rejuvenation treatments.
Importantly, Dr. Schwartz has no BMI requirements for tummy tuck procedures, making his practice accessible to more women.
MATCHING PROCEDURES TO YOUR SPECIFIC GOALS
Still deciding what procedures you'd like to include in your mommy makeover?
Here are some helpful tips.
If your primary concern is separated abdominal muscles
If you can feel or see a gap down your midline, have a persistent belly pooch despite exercise, or experience core weakness and back pain, you need a tummy tuck. This is the only procedure that repairs diastasis recti by suturing your separated muscles back together.
If your breasts are deflated but don’t sag
Breast augmentation alone works well when your skin quality is good with nipples still facing forward. Essentially, you just need to refill what pregnancy and breastfeeding emptied.
However, if your breasts both sag and lost volume (nipples point downward, you can hold a pencil under your breast, or tissue hangs below your breast crease), you need augmentation with lift.
If you’re happy with your breast size but they’re drooping
A breast lift alone repositions everything to a higher, perkier location without changing your volume.
As well, if your breasts remain too large after pregnancy and cause shoulder, neck, or back pain, breast reduction decreases your size while creating proportional, comfortable breasts.
For stubborn fat deposits that won’t budge
Liposuction sculpts specific areas including your abdomen, flanks, hips, thighs, back, and arms.
However, liposuction only works when you have good skin elasticity. It removes fat but cannot tighten loose skin or repair muscles. If you have hanging skin or visible muscle separation, you need a tummy tuck, not just liposuction.
If you have both loose abdominal skin and stubborn fat
The optimal solution combines tummy tuck with liposuction. The tummy tuck handles structural repairs (muscles) and skin removal while liposuction sculpts surrounding areas for 360-degree harmonious contouring.
For intimate area concerns
If you have concerns including enlarged or asymmetrical labia causing discomfort or vaginal laxity affecting function, this can be addressed with labiaplasty or vaginoplasty. Many women don't realize these procedures can be included in mommy makeovers, yet they dramatically improve comfort and confidence.
MINIMAL VERSUS COMPREHENSIVE TRANSFORMATIONS
Your mommy makeover can range from focused, less invasive procedures to extensive multi-area transformations depending on your concerns, goals, available recovery time, and childcare support.
Mini mommy makeovers
Mini approaches scale down to 1-2 specific concerns using less invasive techniques. Popular combinations include mini tummy tuck (lower abdomen only) with breast augmentation, limited liposuction with breast lift, or subtle augmentation with targeted liposuction of small areas.
These require shorter surgery times (2-3 hours versus 4-6+ hours), enable faster recovery (1-2 weeks versus 2-4+ weeks), involve lower costs, create smaller incisions with less scarring, and deliver subtle improvements rather than dramatic transformations.
Mini approaches suit women with minor to moderate concerns, good overall skin quality, localized issues only, busy lifestyles requiring shorter recovery, or those seeking natural-looking subtle enhancements.
Comprehensive mommy makeovers
Comprehensive approaches can include, for example, a full tummy tuck with complete muscle repair, breast lift with augmentation (or reduction), circumferential 360-degree liposuction, and may extend to arms, thighs, buttocks, or intimate areas.
Comprehensive approaches are best for women with:
- Multiple significant concerns,
- No plans for any more children, and
- Adequate recovery time and childcare support available (you cannot lift children or heavy objects for 4-6 weeks).
MAKING INFORMED DECISIONS ABOUT YOUR MOMMY MAKEOVER
During your consultation, a skilled plastic surgeon will listen to you, and they will work with you to create a customized plan that prioritizes your safety, recovery, and goals.
Start by honestly assessing your concerns
What bothers you most when looking in the mirror? Which areas prevent you from wearing certain clothes? What issues cause physical discomfort? What worked before pregnancy but doesn't now?
Which single change would make the biggest difference in your confidence? Prioritize these concerns from most to least bothersome.
Research procedures thoroughly
Understand what each addresses and, critically, what each does NOT do. Review before/after photos of patients with similar body types and concerns. Read about what's involved in recovery so you can plan appropriately.
Consult with board-certified plastic surgeons
Seek surgeons experienced specifically in mommy makeovers. Not all plastic surgeons perform these procedures regularly.
Ask how many they perform annually, review their before/after portfolio focusing on patients similar to you, ensure they're experienced in safely combining procedures (not just performing them individually), and verify their surgical facility holds proper accreditation.
Be prepared to discuss everything openly
Your complete medical history, all medications and supplements, future pregnancy plans, weight stability patterns, lifestyle factors including smoking and exercise habits, your support system during recovery, and budget parameters.
Honesty ensures your surgeon can develop the safest, most effective plan for your circumstances.
READY TO TAKE THE NEXT STEP?
Your mommy makeover journey begins with a conversation. Dr. Schwartz takes time to listen to your concerns, answer every question, and ensure you feel completely informed and confident about your decision.
Contact us today to schedule your personalized consultation