Mommy 2.0

Despite the marketing nickname "mommy makeover," which can sound like a trip to a day spa, these are serious surgeries with potential complications that can require additional procedures—and disruption for kids. With breast augmentation, for example, the initial operation is not likely to be the last. Implants may last 10 or more years, but they do not last a lifetime, according to the FDA. About a quarter of all implant patients have to have another operation within five years due to problems like leaking, breast asymmetry and encapsulation of the implants.

Then there are the body image issues raised by cosmetic surgery—especially for daughters. Berger worries that kids will think their own body parts must need "fixing" too. The surgery on a nose, for example, may "convey to the child that the child's nose, which always seemed OK, might be perceived by Mommy or by somebody as unacceptable," she says.

The book doesn't go into any medical detail. "They should do more about what the surgery is," says my own eight-year-old daughter. "Kids," she says, will want to know more about "what they're going to do to you." But on the other hand, if they knew more about the procedures they might not want their mothers to go through with them. As my daughter points out, "a five-year-old is going to be horrified that their mom is getting water balloons put in her breasts."

Salzhauer knows that not everyone will like his book. "There's a good percentage of your readers who are dead set against plastic surgery, who see it as a sign of the decadence of Western civilization," he says. "But when done by a properly trained board-certified plastic surgeon, it really does help make lives better." Salzhauer may someday get a chance to test that theory—and his book—at home. His wife hasn't had any work done yet but is pregnant with her fifth child.

Click here for our guide to getting breast implants safely.

© 2008