I had my tissue expander to implant surgery June 30th. I wanted to be a size C. I am a swollen size D. Mine feel heavier than the expanders and they are wider than my old breasts used to be. I am struggling to embrace them. Make sure you clarify with your dr how you want to look. We had extensive conversations, and the dr is thrilled with them, but I'm not. I may make the decision to go smaller and do another implant surgery.

You can never ask too many questions. Ask until you're comfortable enough to make a decision.

Losing weight has affected the fat grafting I had done so I will probably have it done again. When they do fat grafting, the surgeon will add extra because the body does reabsorb some of it. It does fill in the hollows and round things out though.

I think my implants are pretty similar in size to my tissue expanders, but the implants are more tear-drop shaped and hang lower. The tissue expanders stuck out more in the front, so they looked a little bigger. Neither looks as natural as my real breasts, but the implants are more natural looking than the tissue expanders. And, they are much more comfortable. My skin was sore around the edges of the tissue expanders. As I said before, I miss having cleavage up higher -- which I think fat grafting around the implants might help. Also, fat grafting should reduce rippling. My plastic surgeon didn't offer it at my original implant exchange (he said I was too slim to have extra fat), but when I asked after what could be done to fix the rippling and make my cleavage start higher and be more gradual, he said fat grafting. If you don't have enough fat at your abdomen, they can take it from the thighs. He said it could take up to three surgeries to get a satisfactory outcome, because your body absorbs some of the fat each time (not sure if that's worsened by gaining/losing weight).

The recon with implants will stay exactly the same irrespective of weight loss or gain, unlike natural tissue (I’m not sure how flaps respond). There was a period where I’d gained quite a bit of treatment induced weight, and at its highest I noticed that my tissue adjacent to the recon, now full of fat cells where my recon had none thanks to mastectomy, was pudging out where it abutted the recon area.

I agree with the others: TEs May feel larger as they project quite a bit.

((Hug))

Yes, implants are soft and moveable. I haven't tried a push-up bra, so maybe that would help w/ the cleavage issue. I think my tissue expanders and implants had the same # of cc's. But, discuss with your plastic surgeon, because maybe it depends on the type of implant. Will you be getting fat grafting?