Breast Augmentation: Know Your Recovery

Even those who are planning to get breast augmentation sometimes shield themselves from some of the more dour points of getting the procedure. They close their eyes to the risks and the recovery stories because they don't want to talk themselves out of it. This is no way to go into what should be a major life decision. Unfortunately, some women wind up very unhappy after their surgeries because they did not do the basic research beforehand. If you want to have a happy and successful recovery, you should at least know what you're getting into. No two recoveries are exactly the same, but here are some possibilities you should be aware of.

Surgery Type

You may have heard that where the surgeon places the implant has as much effect on the appearance of your breast augmentation as which material you choose. This may not be exactly true, but it will have an impact on your recovery. Implants that are placed on top of the chest muscle will allow you a much quicker, less painful recovery than implants that are placed underneath the muscle. In neither situation should you be looking at weeks of pain, of course. Instead the difference should be somewhere around a day of discomfort for above-muscle implants and two or three days for below muscle implants. You should be provided with pain medication in the meantime.

Bruising and Swelling

Bruising and swelling accompany the recovery from any plastic surgery procedure and breast augmentation is no exception to this. This can last quite a while longer than the actual pain from the surgery. Expect to have some degree of swelling for at least the first two weeks. Most of it should be gone by that two week mark, but the remaining twenty percent or so could stick around for the next couple of months. In other words, don't expect everything to look like you imagined for at least a few months.

Initial Disappointment

For all the research you may do, it's important to understand that many women feel a pang of initial disappointment after getting breast augmentation. This is almost entirely due to two factors. One, the recovery process. It is going to take a while for your new chest to look the way it is supposed to. If you expect everything to look great straight out of the operating room, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. Two, some women expect implants to solve problems they simply can't. While having the figure you desire may help with self esteem issues, they aren't going to solve deeper psychological problems. Make sure you're treating an aesthetic problem only and not something more substantial.