I get this question all the time. Most specifically from women who are planning to have children at some point, but with no immediate pending pregnancy. They can see what changes their friends and family members have gone through after having children, and it almost seems pointless to have a procedure done just to lose the result a few years later.
The reality of pregnancy is that you never know what you will get. Some women have multiple children and emerge from the fray unscathed, as if nothing has happened. Some women bear one child and their bodies morph into another being entirely. There does not appear to be much predictability about this, even after a careful examination of all associated family members. What is more, depending on the circumstances and possible complications of the pregnancy, there may be other factors that influence what happens to the breasts by the time all is said and done.
For a patient who is imminently planning to get pregnant, it often does not make much sense to have an operation. But in cases where there is no immediate plan, putting everything on hold is not usually necessary. For may of these women, they have been considering their augmentation or lift or reduction for a while, and they have gotten to the place where they really want to do this for themselves. Given that they are likely to truly enjoy the improvement, and that there is no way to know if this change will be significantly impacted by future events, I encourage them to enjoy the move now. Furthermore, there is a good chance that the women in question will have a different experience with their breasts and their bodies once they are mothers, and delaying that decision is likely to eliminate the pre-baby phase and its inherent benefits.
The final consideration in determining whether to have breast surgery now, is that the future is unknown. It is entirely likely that a given woman will not need to have any other procedures done in the future, or that a future revision will be far less invasive than the original surgery. There is also the reality that any procedure involving an implant would require exchange at some point, and this often coincides with the end of childbearing in women who had their breast surgery before pregnancy. After all, many women have more than one pregnancy, and by the time they are done, it is usually time for stage two, if there was one originally planned. The bottom line is that, if you are considering elective breast surgery and also planning a future family, but you have no immediate plan for the latter, why wait. There is a very good chance that you will get tremendous enjoyment out of your procedure, first before, and then in different ways, after becoming a mom. And if the process of motherhood takes its toll, there is also a good chance that it won’t be as hard as you think to get things back to wonderful afterwards. This is reason #365 to save your plastic surgeon’s phone number.
