Flat in the morning, swollen by dinner, 4 months post op. Anyone else's swelling on a timer?

Tummy tuck mid-February, so coming up on 4 months. Mornings, I genuinely look like the result I hoped for. Then the day happens, and by 6pm there's a firm puffy band above the scar and I look and feel like I did around month one. Tight, heavy, sometimes a bit achy. Overnight it drains away and the cycle resets.

Work has me on my feet most of the day which definitely makes it worse, long shifts are the worst evenings. I stopped wearing the compression garment at 8 weeks because that's what my surgeon said, and part of me wonders if I should dig it out again, but mostly I want to know: is a daily swell-and-drain cycle still NORMAL at 4 months? I made the mistake of googling at 1am and now I've diagnosed myself with a seroma, obviously. Talk me down or tell me to get checked, either is fine.

Mine ran on exactly that timer until month 8, maybe 9. Evenings after long days were the worst, and a salty lunch guaranteed a bad night, I could have plotted it on a graph. It tapered so slowly that I never had a "it's gone" day, I just realised one evening in autumn that I'd stopped checking. 4 months would have been peak timer for me, honestly.

nic1985 said:

is a daily swell-and-drain cycle still NORMAL at 4 months?

Was for me, month 7-ish before it quit. My surgeon's phrase was "gravity plus a rebuilt lymph system doing its best," which I found weirdly comforting on the bad evenings.

Some general context, since this pattern brings a lot of people to their keyboards at 1am. An abdominoplasty divides many of the small lymphatic channels that drain the abdominal wall, and until they re-form, fluid management is slower than normal. Fluid then obeys gravity: upright all day, it accumulates; lying down overnight, it clears. A soft, fairly symmetrical swelling that builds through the day and is gone by morning, worse after long days standing, is the classic version, and a timescale running well past four months is common. The site's guide covers the mechanism and the honest timeline: swelling after a tummy tuck.

A seroma tends to behave differently: a localised collection, often more one-sided, that persists rather than draining away overnight, and can feel like a fluid-filled swelling rather than general puffiness. I'm describing patterns, not examining you, so I won't tell you which you have, and nobody else here should either. What I'd suggest is describing the daily cycle to your surgeon at your next review, and sooner if anything changes character: new redness or heat, fever, pain that escalates, or one area ballooning. The garment question is also theirs to answer, practice on that genuinely varies.

Update: mentioned it at my review, surgeon had a proper press around and there's no collection, her words were "textbook at four months." Slightly embarrassed by how relieved I was to be called boring. She's fine with me using the garment on long shifts if it makes evenings comfier, but says the timer will run for a while yet. So, fellow 1am googlers: apparently the timer is the normal part.