Week 3 and my new belly button is crusty, weepy and frankly enormous. Is this how it's supposed to look??

Full tummy tuck on May 22nd, so I'm just shy of three weeks. The incision is behaving, I'm walking upright-ish, drains out at day 10. The belly button, though. Nobody prepared me for the belly button.

It has a crusty yellow rim, it leaves a little damp spot on the gauze every day, and when I clean it there's a faint smell I can only describe as "old sticking plaster". It also looks HUGE. Deep and wide and sort of startled, nothing like the neat little navels in the before and afters. Yes I googled "belly button infection tummy tuck" at 1am, I know, I've read this board, I already know that was a mistake.

My nurse check isn't until next week and I don't want to be the patient who rings about crust. So: is a crusty weepy navel at week 3 just the deal? When did yours stop looking like a special effect? And what is the smell about, because that's the part properly bothering me.

Deep breath, mine was exactly this. TT mid-February, and the crust rim hung around until week 5, little damp patch and all. The nurse gave me a routine at my check (saline, cotton buds, dry it properly after showers) and honestly the drying mattered more than the cleaning. I'm four and a half months now and it finally looks like a belly button instead of a piercing gone wrong. Still a bit deep, but the startled look wears off, I promise.

2022 girl here. Mine looked like a startled cartoon eye for a good two months and I mourned it privately the whole time. By month three it had relaxed into something I'd actually chosen off a menu. The early size is mostly swelling pushing everything wide, it deflates along with the rest of you.

One thing I want on the record because NOBODY warned me: around week 6 a little white pimple came up on the rim of mine, with what looked like a tiny thread in the middle. I was convinced the whole thing was coming undone. It was a stitch. One of the dissolvable ones had decided not to dissolve and was working its way out instead. The nurse whipped it out in about four seconds, the spot healed in days, and she said they see it constantly. So if you get a mystery whitehead on a scar line in a few weeks, that's likely what it is, and it's a nurse job, not a tweezers-at-home job.

katied88 said:

a faint smell I can only describe as "old sticking plaster"

Mine smelled exactly like that for a month. Deep new navel plus trapped moisture, that's the whole mystery. Dry it like you mean it. Cool setting on the hairdryer was my trick, felt ridiculous, worked.

Some context on why this particular spot behaves this way, because the belly button is the part of an abdominoplasty that surprises people most at week 3. In a full tummy tuck the navel is brought out through a fresh opening in the repositioned skin, so its rim is a complete circular incision, healing in a warm, moist, poorly ventilated little pocket. That is why it lags behind the main scar: expect crusting, a yellowish film on the healing surface (that is fibrin, a normal part of moist wound healing, not pus), and small amounts of clear or straw-coloured weeping for the first several weeks. A faint odour from trapped moisture is common too, which is why the unglamorous advice you've already had, clean gently and dry thoroughly, is the correct advice. Follow your own team's regimen though, because practices genuinely differ on what to clean with. The site's guide to the tummy tuck belly button covers how the new navel is made and how the look matures.

On size and shape: swelling holds the rim wide and taut early on, so almost everyone's looks big, deep and "startled" at week 3. Most settle recognisably by around 3 months and keep refining up to a year, so don't judge it yet. And Kelly has named the other classic surprise: a spitting suture. Deep dissolvable stitches occasionally get pushed out by the body rather than absorbed, surfacing weeks later as a small white spot or blister on a scar line, sometimes with a visible thread. It is common and minor, but it belongs to the practice nurse, not home tweezers, exactly as she says.

What is NOT the normal picture, and turns "don't want to bother them" into "ring today": redness spreading beyond the immediate rim, the area becoming hot, thick foul-smelling discharge rather than a faint mustiness, fever, or the rim opening up. None of that waits for a scheduled check. Absent those, a crusty, weepy, oversized navel at three weeks is the boring kind of normal, and boring is what we want.

Update from week 6 and a bit. Nurse check went fine, she looked at the crust and said "healing, next question", showed me the cleaning routine and blessed Jess's hairdryer method. Crust is nearly gone, damp patch stopped about ten days ago, smell gone with it.

AND. A little white spot came up on the rim last week with a tiny thread in it. Kelly, I said "I know exactly what this is" out loud in my bathroom. Nurse took it out in seconds, called it a spitting stitch like it was the most ordinary thing in the world, which apparently it is. The navel itself has calmed from "startled" to merely "mildly surprised". Month 3 report to follow if anyone wants it.