I never thought I’d be the type. Intelligent women don’t give in to vanity do
they? However, twins followed by two more pregnancies within three years
destroyed my figure and my waist had disappeared. Instead around my middle
hung what the doctors politely call an apron or pannus. I looked more like a
kangaroo with her pouch hanging out to dry. It made me feel old and unsexy.
I have never been a skinny-minny but my waist has always given me shape. So, I
tried not to mind when people congratulated me on the imminent arrival of
baby No 5. I became practised at finding ways of letting people down gently
when I had to explain that I wasn’t pregnant. I found clothes that covered
my bulges and hid horrible photographs. It was one of these, a picture of me
leaning over a Christmas tree with a sagging belly, that finally pushed me
into doing something about it. I had to accept that if I wanted to look slim
after having four children I needed to have an abdominoplasty, also known as
a tummy tuck.
However, as embarrassed as I was by my figure, the idea of “fixing” it filled
me with shame. It was a public acknowledgement that I didn’t like myself
much. I felt that I was giving in to vanity and I was scared. It didn’t
matter that I was married to a plastic surgeon, Professor Peter Butler, who
has tummy-tucked a number of my friends. The bottom line is that all surgery
carries a small risk, from a fatal reaction to the anaesthesia to internal
bleeding and infections that are the very occasional side-effect of
abdominoplasty. With four small children and a husband dependent upon me, I
found it difficult to reconcile these responsibilities with the rather
selfish desire to regain my figure.
“Women are embarrassed to have the operation because they feel it is a sign of
vanity,” says Dr Alex Clarke, a consultant clinical psychologist with a
speciality in plastic surgery and body image. “But in fact it’s the reverse.
They feel that they are abnormal and just want to feel ordinary again.” One
woman she talked to described herself as “a beautiful chocolate box tied
with a glorious red ribbon but when you opened the box all you found inside
were decaying chocolates covered in white spots; all promise and no
delivery”.
For some women the negative associations with floppy abdomens can have serious
consequences for themselves and their children, isolating them from society
as they run away from the school gate and avoid socialising with their
families. “It affects the level of intimacy with their partners,” says Dr
Clarke, who, with her co-authors Rob Willson and David Veale, has produced a
self-help book entitled Overcoming Body Image Problems Including Body
Dysmorphic Disorder (Constable & Robinson). “There is a feeling of
self-disgust, especially with the doughy texture of the tummy. It flaps and
can even smell.”
My female GP advised against surgery and sent me away with the telephone
number of a good Pilates instructor. “It doesn’t work. No amount of exercise
is going to restore the elasticity in stretched skin,” said Patrick
Mallucci, my husband’s partner at London Plastic Surgery Associates, who had
agreed to perform the operation.
My husband supported me in my decision to have the surgery because he wanted
me to feel happier about my body, but we had decided that he would not be
performing the operation.There are some things a husband doesn’t need to see
.
Before my pregnancies my rectus muscles ran vertically and parallel from my
chest bone to my pelvic bone, each side of my tummy button. After four
children these had been pushed apart and bowed so that everything sort of
hung out, hence giving the impression that I was pregnant again. Mr Mallucci
was going to knit these muscles back together and pull everything back into
place. The stretched skin below my chest would be pulled down tightly and
anchored just below my bikini line. He would create a new hole for my tummy
button and cut off the excess skin at the bottom. I was told to prepare
myself for a long scar running from hip bone to hip bone but, unless I was
unlucky, the scar would be hidden beneath a bikini.
Once at the hospital for the operation, Mr Mallucci drew lines across my
abdomen. As he talked about trimming here and there I began to feel I was in
a hairdressers. That is until the men in blue coats came to take me away to
the anaesthetic room. I counted to eight before the room vanished. The next
24 hours were foul. It wasn’t the pain, which wasn’t much worse than a
C-section, but the general anaesthetic and painkillers. I felt slightly
better when Mr Mallucci told me that I had had a ventral hernia, the result
of my rectus muscles failing to close again after my pregnancies, and the
operation procedure was almost a medical necessity.
“I hope you will now feel stronger, fitter and stand better,” he said.
However, the medical benefits were a bonus rather than the reason that I had
the surgery.
It took a few months before I was running and swimming properly but when one
day I jumped off a wall without thinking — no longer like an old woman
standing back to judge whether I could make it — I knew that the unexpected
benefits of the procedure had turned back the passage of time.
Looking back I can’t believe I worried that this was a selfish desire. I feel
younger, healthier, and inspired by my new shape, I have lost weight. Now my
children have a happier more confident lighter mother and and my husband has
the old Annabel, the woman he married, back. My stomach hasn’t been this
flat for 20 years and my scar is fading rapidly. I’ve even bought a bikini.
When last week somebody shouted after me as I left a party, “What’s a mother
of four doing with a figure like that?” I giggled as I replied: “Taken a
shortcut.”
Tummy tucks: the facts
- There was a 30 per cent increase in the number of people having tummy tucks
last year. Of those who had the operation, 96 per cent were female,
according to statistics from the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic
Surgeons (BAAPS).
- Complications from tummy-tuck surgery can range from minor bleeding and
infection to potentially fatal pulmonary embolisms (blood clots that travel
to the lungs). Most complications happen in the ten days after surgery.
- Most people will need 2-3 weeks off work after a tummy tuck, but if muscles
inside the stomach are tightened as part of the procedure they will not be
able to lift anything for 6-8 weeks.
- Surgeons advise that you should be happy with your weight before surgery and
that, if you are female, that you have completed your family.
