The doctor entered the room. He was the white-coated embodiment of compassion and understanding. Within two minutes, he held my bare breasts in his hands. He handled, with confidence, the concave tissue. My face heated with the knowledge that my nakedness was not even slightly alluring.

“The areolas are supposed to rest in alignment with the top of the armpit.” Mine were below the bottom of my ribs. “That’s what we call ptosis. We can alleviate some of this with a breast lift, but without augmentation, it will do nothing for breast density.”

He asked me to lie on my back, and he pressed my stomach. He explained that abdominoplasty is physician-speak for tummy tuck. My stomach had not only stretched and deflated, leaving a heavy, crinkled pouch of skin and tissue, but the two halves of my abdominal muscles had been permanently wrenched apart, leaving a three-finger gap between muscles. It was painful to move, to exercise, to pick up my children or get out of bed in the morning. The doctor examined me for a moment and stood back.

“We can fix all this.”

I cried behind sunglasses as I walked to my car.

Never in my life would I have guessed I’d get plastic surgery.

I disdained women like that: insecure and shallow about their looks. And yet, after having two children, I found myself at 25 years old with the body of an old lady. My grandmother’s 82-year-old figure was more feminine. My body was like a rubber band that had been stretched one too many times, unable to snap back into its natural shape.

It’s hard to explain or describe how a woman feels about her body—it’s either her friend or her enemy. Mine was no friend. I didn’t want my daughters growing up thinking that a woman should be embarrassed about her body. I was also afraid they’d never have children, seeing what pregnancy did to me.

In 2010, more than 296,000 American women underwent breast augmentation; 116,000, tummy tucks. And I was one among them.

That's a big number absolutely but it's tiny relatively speaking, right?