While for some everything regresses as if by magic or others stroll like a catwalk despite the daily life with work and children, many women still feel old and gray years after giving birth rather than radiant and beautiful. After three births, our author has many questions about her body. She wants to answer one of them: Cosmetic surgery – yes or no?
“Your breasts are perfectly fine. If you want to do one thing, it’s your forehead. You can save a lot if you start now.” After paying an initial consultation of 25 euros, I stand topless in a sterile office in front of a cosmetic surgeon, take a deep breath and look like what you do when you don’t know if you are dreaming or something is really happening.
“They bring a lot of frustration with them. They’re not doing so well, you can see that. Then everything takes on a different shape. When they lose weight again, you can come back if you want breasts in a different way.“When did I tell her I wanted to lose weight? I look at her questioningly. “Dude, home, kids, I get it. But hey, she’s lost weight again.”
Five minutes later I’m sitting in my car smoking a cigarette. It’s October. Is cold. My little one just settled into daycareand thought it would be a good idea to spend one of the first mornings with no kids in years to tune into my body.
There is more than just a construction site
Bridget Jones. You are crazy? I look down at myself. Sometimes you don’t even know which construction site to look at first. There are thin, damaged hair that hasn’t seen a hairdresser for six months. The belly that hangs like a flat tire and looks like a sandbox in which a child has dug furrows with a rake. The hole in the center four centimeters in diameter which was a navel. Nursing breasts used three times, which used to be protruding and are now what she dreads being 18 (“Did you see those huge nipples? Let’s hope we won’t be like this one day!”). The extra twenty kilos – particularly recognizable on the forearms, inner thighs and double chin.
I know many who have never felt as beautiful as when they were pregnant. i’m one of them Not having to pull my stomach in was great. But my stomach still thinks it would be nice.
Confronted by grossly outdated and deeply ingrained ideals of beauty, in my mind as a 36-year-old mom of three, I’m still self-destructive. My body has churned out three perfect babies in the past six years. The hope that being a mother would solve the problematic relationship with my body did not materialize. It’s there – in your mid-30s as well as when you’re 14. It doesn’t matter what number is on the scale or how something is modeled on it – the insecurity remains the same.
How could I not find myself beautiful before?
I know my body has been working hard for many years. There’s no point in crying in bed because, oh no, you don’t look like Jessica Alba or the Sex/Life rocket when you’re a mom. It’s only mildly irritating when you have the aha moment where you looked like a bombshell in front of the kids, but unfortunately you’ve never seen it that way thanks to ingrained complexes. Many of the many compliments I considered normal in life before kids I wish I could cement in my head today. Or put it in a snowball as a saying to believe it yourself. How could I not feel beautiful before?
The obsession with my appearance accompanies me – like many other women – from an early age. The struggle to experience outer femininity in a form far removed from what I was told I was led me to the darkest corners of my soul.
Fast forward: kids, responsibilities, busy 24/7 – then there are those who simply act. Do beauty treatments (get done), fitness, dress up, styling, maybe even one or the other operation. Or those who deny something on principle, don’t need to, are fine as they are, or are not impressed by external, socially standardized beauty.
Complexes are nothing new
And then there are those for whom it’s about more than just changing the surface. Who have covered most of their lives with complexes that unfortunately have not disappeared into thin air through motherhood. Their self-esteem was trampled on very early. Who “just wouldn’t want to do something”, even if they would like to because what they really want is to finally be accepted for who they are.
Negative thoughts about my body are not new. When I was thirteen, I already thought I had the broadest shoulders, the thickest arms, the most diverse breasts, the biggest nose, and the ugliest stomach in the world. I do not have. Nobody has. Misperception of self snaps your neck.
When I look at my kids who are so perfect, every inch of them. So I hope they never feel that way about themselves. They can then curse me for the clothes or hairstyles they wore. I just hope you never spend so much time compiling lists of things that “need to change” to be right. Because then life very quickly becomes a “do this and that until then” and “only when this and that is done”, and this “feeling good as you are” becomes something distant, something unknown, something that isn’t there yet, maybe there never will be. I wish, if you don’t like something about yourself, that I could give you the freedom to decide for yourself what to do with your body and what not – and that it doesn’t take decades for that to happen.
The visit to Dr
My boobs are absolutely fine and Bridget Jones goes home first. Two months later I am in a clinic. No beautydocs around me. The local hospital.
I look out the window as I tell my roommates that George Clooney is flying over in a helicopter and we’re leaving for Venice for the weekend. We agree that George Clooney is one hot guy, code name, discuss how we want our hospital breakfast – eggs – boiled, scrambled or poached. That mango would be nice. Avocado. A little cucumber. We have known each other for a long time who is separated, who is not yet, who still has hope, how old are the children.
We are three women who had surgery the day before for various health reasons, they were very nervous and spent the night together. I remember asking the nurse in the recovery room for a hamburger. “There is no food here.” I’m thinking of giving him a note so he can do it, but there was no note, just the surgical shirt, and then I fell asleep again. Twilight sleep was beautiful, God, I wanted it to last longer.
While the two much older roommates doze off, I watch “Modern Love” seven out of eight episodes, pull a mask and conditioner out of my purse, and stare at the toilet. “Put them when, if not now,” says the girl, who is already a grandmother. Senior doctor comes in, looks at my clay with annoyance, ten students in towI look back confused. He explains what kind of surgery I underwent and asks me to show what the current status is. “Uh, in front of everyone?” He nods without looking up. Some look at my pore cleansing mask. I think about my asshole that has just been operated on. “No thank you.”
Hospitalization or weekend at the spa?
Three hours later, after my wound has healed, I take the bus home and meet my husband and kids at the playground. A case of corona in the nursery, she says, otherwise everything is fine. So the procedure inside my butt, which left some skin tags and hemorrhoids and the manicure and face mask in the hospital bed, are the closest thing to a spa weekend in my life as a mom of three. I give up: the desire to look super awesome is there, but the resources for change are limited.
Small mini beauty routines like brushing your teeth and wetting your face in the morning; Eyebrow makeup, a little concealer and mascara when there is no time for a full make-up; buy underwear that fits you well; dance when no one is watching; invest in facial care, practice upright posture, consider weekly facial masks as the ultimate, a spritz of perfume just for me; pay attention to freshly washed hair instead of a complete shave; Dress well when you have the time and energy: all of this will have to do for now – and it does.
Hopefully, I’ll get double the years for free. Should I get breasts done or have stomach fat injected into my butt? At the moment: no idea. But what I intend to do is that if the desire becomes more present, it is well thought out, the risks are clarified and the financing does not put the family in trouble. Above all, I promise myself not to let me go through another year of desperately searching for a way to accept myself as I am. There are many exaggerated ambitions. Living peacefully in your body, regardless of the path, is not.
cosmetic surgery?
80% women
According to the International Society for Aesthetic Medicine (IGÄM e. V.), in Germany alone, one million patients are under the scalpel every year. 80% of the operated are women. After a year or so, many have another cosmetic surgery procedure.
What other moms say:
“I too have days where I look down on myself and get melancholy. But the more I realize what my body has been up to over the past 36 years, the more it motivates me to love and accept it. It’s my body and I can’t trade it for a new one. I stopped comparing myself to the “perfect” norms of our society. As a 36-year-old mother of two, I no longer have to compete with 20-year-old women.”
Tamika: @me.andmylittleones
“The woman from about nine years ago is closed Guest in an old bodyI hope it’s just a short stay… And no, I can’t live with that, but I have no choice as nothing else is available at the moment.”
Katharina: @simplynurkatta
“Most fathers have changed too, and without having given birth to a child. So why should I care?”
Birte: @birtefulde
1.46 million
Cosmetic surgeries were performed in the United States in 2020. In Brazil approximately 1.31 million, closely followed by Russia and Mexico.
Uschi Bonaparte She’s a 36-year-old mother of three and Instagrams things that are rarely shared at daycare or the playground. In his book “Through the Momsun: Howling and laughing spasms until the pelvic floor burns” reports unfiltered from her life as a mother of three.
