Mini tummy tuck 3 months ago, lower tummy is flat but the bulge ABOVE my belly button is still there. Swelling, or did I need a full?

First post, been reading here for months. I had a mini tummy tuck almost 3 months ago, mid January. Below the belly button I am honestly delighted: the overhang I hated is gone and the scar is low and neat. But the soft bulge ABOVE my belly button, the one that shows through fitted tops, is sitting exactly where it was before surgery. I keep waiting for it to be swelling and go down, and it just... doesn't change.

Two kids, both big babies, if that's relevant. The word diastasis did come up at my consult, but I'll admit the mini's shorter scar and quicker recovery did most of my deciding. Now I'm reading things on this site that make my stomach drop (the working half of it, anyway).

So: is 3 months too early to judge and this could still be swelling? Or does a mini just not fix whatever is going on up top? And if it doesn't, what am I even calling this, did I have the wrong operation??

Oh love. I nearly wrote your post from the other side in 2022. I walked into my consult wanting the mini, had pre-sold it to myself for the exact same reasons, smaller scar, faster recovery. My surgeon had me lie flat, do a little head lift, and ran her finger up my midline, and the gap went past my belly button practically to my ribs. She said a mini would give me a lovely flat lower tummy and leave the top exactly as it was, and that I'd be back within two years asking her to fix it.

I sulked about the scar for a week and booked the full with muscle repair. Recovery was no joke, the muscle repair is what makes it tough, but the whole wall is flat now, top and bottom, morning and night. The site's mini tummy tuck page spells out those limits in black and white. I wish I'd read it before my consult, I'd have argued with my surgeon a lot less.

Before my surgery I spent two YEARS trying to train my gap shut. Planks, crunches, every "close your diastasis in 8 weeks" program going. The crunches actually made the doming worse, you could watch the bulge ridge up along my middle every time I sat up. Strength went up, gap did not move a millimetre. So if anyone tells you to just exercise the upper bulge away: if it's a true separation, that ship has sailed. Mine only went flat when it was stitched.

One practical thing before your next appointment: same spot, same light, photo first thing in the morning and again at night, for two weeks. Swelling keeps a schedule, it builds through the day. If your bulge looks identical at 7am and 9pm, that told me more than any amount of mirror agonising.

A general sketch, because this exact question walks into clinic regularly. At three months swelling is still entirely real, but it has a pattern: fluid builds while you are upright through the day, drains overnight, and feels soft. Laxity, or an unrepaired muscle separation, does not keep a schedule. A bulge above the navel that is the same at breakfast as at bedtime, and that domes along the midline when you lift your head or sit up, points to structure rather than fluid. Which is why Jess's photo routine is genuinely useful groundwork, not just reassurance.

The structural part, plainly. A mini abdominoplasty treats below the navel: the incision is shorter, the navel is not moved, and the skin is usually not lifted above it, so any muscle repair is limited to the lower abdomen. After pregnancy a rectus diastasis very often runs the full length of the midline, above and below the navel, and the upper half of that separation is simply out of a mini's reach. That is not the operation failing; it is the operation doing exactly what it does, on anatomy that may have needed more. The site's page on muscle repair in a tummy tuck explains the plication and why exercise cannot close an established gap, as Paula found out the long way.

What I will not do is diagnose you from a keyboard, and nobody else here should either. Two concrete questions for your surgeon's practice: what do the operation notes say was done to the muscle, and is what you are seeing above the navel consistent with that. If the upper midline was never repaired, waiting will not change it, and the conversation becomes what a revision or conversion to a fuller repair involves, and when. Surgeons have that conversation all the time; a good one will not be offended by the question.

Update for whoever finds this in their own 1am spiral. Photos for two weeks: identical morning and night, so not swelling. Got my op notes from the practice: muscle tightened below the navel only, which matches what everyone here worked out. Saw my surgeon last week and to his credit he was straight with me. My separation runs above the navel and the mini was never going to touch that part; he says we discussed it at consult, and honestly, the word IS in my notes. I just heard "smaller scar" louder than everything else.

We're now talking about converting to a full repair, not before next year. Gutted and weirdly relieved at the same time: at least it has a name and a fix. Listen to the marker-pen surgeons, ladies.