Stitch Free

Ok I will apologize right now because this post will probably sound so shallow and vain.
So Thursday I got my stitches taken out. I would really like to explain the feeling of this, but I really cant. I have tried and nothing seems to accurate portray the feeling. So here is a vague description of what they did. If you have ever had stitches removed, good for you. I have never had stitches, well thats not completely true I have had like 4 stitches that were dissolvable, so I dont think those count, since I didn't have to get them removed. Well these stitches you had to get removed but because the surgeon didn't want there to be much scarring he did internal stitches with roughly 6-8 external. If you can imagine pulling a thread out of a shirt, you know how you have a starting point and you can pull the thread almost entirely out. Well that is what they did, they had 6-8 external points wear they cut the thread and would pull, so they were dethreading me internally. Yes it hurt, but it was a very weird feeling. And I honestly believe that it would have hurt more if they hadn't cut through all my nerve endings in my stomach to do the procedure. I guess it was a good thing ;)
Ok well here is the vain and shallow part. Since I went to this doctor at my intial consultation he looked at my stomach and said that he would be able to remove all my stretch marks, yes I had a lot, so I was really excited. Well Thursday was the first day I was able to even see anything and he didn't get all the stretch marks out. I know I am lucky compared to some women who have to live with all the stretch marks, but I guess I just had my hopes up because he said he could remove them all. He never garunteed he could get them all he just said looking at the hernia and where my muscles were he thought he would be able to get them. And what sound weird is that I had three little stretch marks on the side of my hip that I knew he couldn't get rid of because my skin wouldn't be able to stretch that far, so I was excited to keep those. I thought "hey what a great trade off, remove hundreds of stretch marks and keep three little ones". Well wrong. Just so happens that my three little ones were right on the incision line, so you can see maybe 1 of the 3. Well I guess my main problem stems from seeing all the before/after pictures of people and I guess I just expected to see the after picture on me now. Of course its not there yet, I have a good two-four weeks of swelling to go down before I look anything like the after pictures. So although my mom and doctor, nurse, etc all say everything looks good its hard for me to see it, so honestly right now I am not very happy with the results. Yes it looks better then it did my stomach even know is flat, probably flatter then pre baby but I just wanted to see the curves. I think the thing I have to get over is that some people dont have curves no matter how much work they get done. If I look at it that way I am not that upset. 
Ok I am done being vain and shallow for now, here are a few pictures (sorry if its TMI)

here I am before the stitches came out

After they took the stitches out

here I am standing up the next day without my wrap on. That dark hole is my bellybutton, it has disolvable stitches in it. and I am still very swollen.

Me, My Hernia, and I

So on Aug. 27th I had surgery to fix my ingastric hernia. This surgery was a total of 6 hours long. The reason for such along surgery was because they had to put a medical "chicken wire" to hold my intestines in and bind my abdominal muscles together and then the muscles are secured together with live cell tissue (a  mesh wall) to hold them in). Thats all interior, because of the drastic change in shape I woudl have a lot of extra skin, so the surgeon woudl then remove the extra skin, and since I had stretch marks and an umblical hernia, he just removed the front of the stomach skin. Essentially a tummy tuck. All of this took 6 hours.
This was a great thing because I no longer look 6 months pregnant, and a bonus my stretch marks(majority) of them are gone. The down size is now will have a scar horizontal scar from hip bone to hip bone and a vertical scar from pelvic bone to breast bone. I am a little scared to see what it looks like, but I was always going to have the dark line down my belly from pregnancy so its not that much different and the hip bone scar I should be able to cover up with any bottoms-hopefully.
Now this surgery means alot to me. It kind of is like my ending. Almost two years to the day (1 week shy of two years) ago I started my, what I call, pregnancy journey. Two years ago labor day weekend I had my first surgery ever. Laproscopic surgery to repair a septum in my uterus. During that surgery we found that I did not have endometrosis, but adhensions which we have determined was caused by my appendix leaking. These adhensions destroyed my fallopian tubes, thus sending us down the path of IVF. We started IVF prep Feb 2009 and did our retrieval and transfer in May. Jan 2010 the twins were  born, and since we got one of each we decided we were happy with our two and are done. So August I finished my pregnancy/baby journey. I know that seems a little weird to say finished with my pregnancy journey, but basically with this last surgery having a tummy tuck doctors do not recommend having anymore children. You are probably asking why, well.. the reason for this is repairing the hernia doens't cause problems when having more children but tightening the abdominal muscles back up and removing the extra skin, means that getting pregnant again it would essentially reverse the muscle tightening and stretch out the "new" skin, which means after having any more children I would have to have this surgery again because the chances of my body going back to "pre-baby" body is extremely unlikely. So we had to make a decision on if we were wanting to have more children to post pone the surgery, but would have to find a balance because the ingastric hernia would start to be dangerous for my health. In so many words, if we wanted to have more children and didn't want to pay for my surgery again we would need to start within the next year, and after having twins, money and room would be the largest of our concerns. So of course you figured out our decision, I had surgery. Craig and I know that there is always that chance of a miracle baby, since I have to IVF to get pregnant if a miracle happens and I got pregnant we would not have a problem at all paying for the surgery again.
Anyway, I had surgery on Friday the 27th, went back on Monday to make sure everything was going ok. This appt they monitored my drainage-yes drainage I had two drains and every 2-3 hrs we had to empty them and record the amount of fluid. If you have never had drains-good for you, if you have you know how nasty it is. Well last thursday my fluid was extremely low so they took my drains out, I cant explain the feeling, except it felt like someone was pulling a worm out of my stomach. Tomorrow, Thursday, I get my stitches out. I have to be honest that I am a little scared because I have never had stitches before and so never had them removed and I just dont want the pain. Oh yeah and another sucky thing about the surgery is I am on bedrest for a month (which is more strict then I was pregnant with the twins) and what is so hard, is that I cannot lift anything including the kids.
Well I dont have any post surgery pictures (sisn't think a picture of my drains would be very pleasing) but hopefully tomorrow I can put some up. But for now here is what my stomach looked like the morning of my surgery.

I know it doesn't look that bad, just looks like I have been lazy and let fat take over, but to give you an idea I am actually 5 lbs under pre pregnancy weight.