Should I get plastic surgery before my baby grows up?
- Published
I don't want it to upset him in the future
This article contains some upsetting images
I know I’m badly burnt and I only have nine fingers, but growing up, I never felt ugly. My mum – who adopted me after I survived a caravan fire as a baby – was always complimenting me. I didn’t feel especially beautiful, but I never felt that was important. I was a girl, I was adopted, I was good at sports, and I was burnt. It was just another thing about me, and never felt like that big a deal.
I had to have a lot of surgery when I was a child for my burns – skin grafts and various operations – but when I was in my late teens, I stopped. The operations the doctors suggested would be painful, and it wasn’t clear how beneficial they would be, so I felt there wasn’t any point. I thought, ‘I’ll never look normal, so there’s no point in trying’. It wasn’t defeatist, just practical.
It sounds clichéd, but I was really just living my life. By 17 I was trying to be a personal trainer with my own business, working and paying my rent. I was meant to go to the doctor once a year to check up on my scars, but I hadn’t gone for 12 years. My whole childhood had been full of medical appointments and surgeries, so I was tired of it. There were other things that were more important for me.
Annie, before and after she was burnt in a caravan fire as a baby
A few years ago, though, in my late twenties, my attitude towards cosmetic surgery started to change. My face was really uncomfortable, and the skin felt tight. I ended up having some laser work. They pierced holes in my scar tissue, and when it healed, the skin was looser. I felt so good, and much more confident. That was when I started thinking about getting a nose job.
I don’t need it – it is definitely a cosmetic thing– but my nose is quite high up. If I had surgery, it could be dropped down. I think I’d look better, and I’d probably feel better too. It’s risky because of my scar tissue. I don’t necessarily know what it'll look like. It could look worse.
For years now, I’ve been umming and aahing over it. I actually booked it in last year, but then I fell pregnant with a baby boy. I didn't want to have surgery while pregnant, so I cancelled, but I thought about it throughout those nine months. I even went over to South Korea as part of my new BBC Three documentary, where plastic surgery is hugely popular and really advanced to see what they could do for me. I was tempted, but still unsure.
Annie in BBC Three's 'Plastic Surgery Capital of the World'
I know that I have to make my mind up soon. I don't want my son to be like, ‘Mum you look really different’. I think it must be really difficult for a child to see their mum’s appearance suddenly change. When I was younger and had loads of operations, my older brother used to hate it. He didn’t like the look, the smell – sometimes the skin smells weird after surgery – and he was really sensitive about it.
Two weeks ago, I gave birth to a baby boy, Sonny. I am now a mother. I’m still free to have surgery. But do I want to? I know that if I do go for the nose job, I’d have to do it in the next few years before Sonny realises what’s happening. I’m meant to be getting married in 2019 so that’s another factor. Part of me is tempted to just do it, so I can know once and for all how it would look, but I can’t bring myself to commit.
I don’t just worry about how my child would feel about my face changing - I’ve also been unsure how my fiancé, Sam, would feel about it. I think you have to live how you want to live, but I also believe that in a relationship it’s important to see what the other person thinks. I asked him recently and he told me, "It’s your face, if you want to change it you can. It’s not up to me." I said, "What if it goes wrong and it looks weird?" And he said that token boy thing of, "You look fine as you are."
Annie with fiance, Sam
To be honest, I just don’t feel the urgency to do it anymore. I think it’s because Sonny is looking at me with his big eyes, and my priorities have changed. My brain can only think about him right now. Emotionally, he’s the number one thing. I’m thinking, ‘Is he ok? Is he happy?’
The hierarchy of things that are important to me have changed. Even though my nose job is still in the back of my mind, I’ve started to think, ‘If something went wrong in the surgery and I wasn’t even that hell-bent on it, then I’d be a total idiot.' I’m not relying on it to change my whole world, so is it worth it?
My feelings have changed so much in the two weeks since I became a mother. I have no idea how I’ll feel in the next few months, let alone the next year. For now, I’ve decided not to commit to anything. All I want to do is focus on Sonny, not my nose.
Plus, as the doctor said to me in South Korea, they can't do as much for my nose as they could for someone without scarring - it's always going to have a risk. I can't help but have his words in the back of my mind.
As told to Radhika Sanghani
Annie’s story is on BBC Three’s Plastic Surgery Capital of the World
Originally published 18 January 2018.
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