Mommy Makeover Recovery: The Timeline and Where HBOT Fits In

A mommy makeover combines abdominoplasty with breast surgery, a lift, augmentation, or reduction, in one operation, often with liposuction. The recovery is therefore two recoveries running at once. In a 10-year series of 268 combined cases, Stevens et al. (2009)  reported no life-threatening complications and an overall complication rate of 34%, with abdominoplasty seroma and scars needing revision making up 68% of those complications. This article covers what the recovery involves, how the timeline usually runs, and where Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) fits, based on the published cohorts in abdominoplasty and breast surgery. No study has tested HBOT for a combined mommy makeover as such.

What the recovery involves

• The abdominal side: a long lower incision, tightened abdominal muscles, drains in many cases, and a compression garment. Standing fully upright and lifting are restricted for weeks. The StatPearls entry on abdominoplasty  describes the procedure and its course.

• The breast side: incisions around the areola and often below it, a support garment, and restrictions on arm movement and sleeping position.

• The combination: Stevens et al. note that shorter total downtime and lower cost than two separate operations are the reasons combined surgery is popular. The trade is a harder first two weeks, because the abdomen and the chest are both healing.

How the timeline usually runs

Most surgeons quote several weeks before normal daily activity and months before the final result, with the abdominal recovery setting the pace. In a published cohort of aesthetic surgery patients who all received HBOT after surgery, median return to work was 21 days after abdominoplasty and 3 days after breast procedures. Those figures come from a series without a comparison group, described below, and your surgeon's timeline for drains, garments, and activity governs your case.

What the cohorts reported

• Friedman et al. (2019) : 356 abdominoplasty patients, 83 of whom completed one to three 90-minute sessions at 2 ATA before surgery. Their complication rate was 8.4% against 32.6%, and 6.3% against 39.7% after propensity matching, with no infections, no tissue necrosis, and no hypertrophic scars in the HBOT group. Seroma and wound separation did not differ significantly. The cohort was more than half post-bariatric, so it describes higher-risk body contouring than a typical mommy makeover, and patients chose their own group.

• Aguilar et al. (2024) : 296 aesthetic surgery patients, most having two or three procedures at once across liposuction, abdominoplasty, breast lift, augmentation, and fat transfer, who all had five daily 45-minute sessions at 2 atm starting 24 hours after surgery. There were no infections or necrosis. In the 45 patients whose main procedure was on the breast, the only late complication was wound separation in 6.6%. There was no control group, and the authors state they could not prove HBOT was effective.

• Mortada et al. (2025) : a meta-analysis of 11 studies and 734 aesthetic surgery patients, 36.4% abdominoplasty and 27.3% breast procedures, that reported a pooled mean healing time of 11.3 days with HBOT and called for randomized trials. The pooled figure has no comparison arm.

No controlled study has tested HBOT for routine recovery after breast lift, augmentation, or reduction, and a 2025 systematic review by Fisher et al.  judged the evidence for HBOT in aesthetic surgery to be limited. Medical hyperbaric programs also treat complications such as nipple or skin-flap ischemia after breast surgery. That is physician-directed care, not what OxyRenew provides. The reason clients book sessions around these procedures is the mechanism: at 2.0 ATA, substantially more oxygen dissolves into blood plasma, and the abdominoplasty cohort is the largest data set linking that to fewer healing problems in elective surgery.

Timing around a mommy makeover

For surgical clients, a 6-session package is typically structured as one session before surgery and five as soon as possible after, sometimes the same day if your doctor allows. The two cohorts above cover both ends of that shape: sessions on the days before surgery in one, and five daily sessions from the day after surgery in the other. Tell us about drains and garments when you book, and your surgeon decides when you can start.

HBOT in Los Angeles

HBOT is not FDA-cleared for cosmetic surgery recovery. At OxyRenew in West Hollywood, sessions run in a private 2.0 ATA hard-shell chamber with a Certified Hyperbaric Technician monitoring from start to finish. You sit or recline during the session, and a compression garment can stay on.

Book your first session online, or contact us to speak directly with a Certified Hyperbaric Technician about timing around your procedure date. You can also read about tummy tuck recovery, capsular contracture after breast augmentation, and more about HBOT for surgery recovery.