When she was pregnant with her son Junior, who turns 9 this month, Gabriela Acosta ballooned from 115 pounds to 196. Acosta lost the weight but wound up with stretched, saggy skin. Even her son noticed. He said her stomach looked "pruney," the result, he thought, of staying in the shower too long. So, the 29-year-old stay-at-home mom scheduled a consultation with a board-certified plastic surgeon.
Acosta told her doctor she wasn't sure how to talk to her son about the procedures she was considering. That's when he showed her the manuscript for his children's picture book, "My Beautiful Mommy" (Big Tent Books), out this Mother's Day. It features a perky mother explaining to her child why she's having cosmetic surgery (a nose job and tummy tuck). Naturally, it has a happy ending: mommy winds up "even more" beautiful than before, and her daughter is thrilled.
The reassuring tale helped win Acosta over—she scheduled breast augmentation and a tummy tuck. Since February, when she had the surgery, she and Junior have read the book a half dozen times, and she says it helped him feel excited rather than scared. "I didn't want him to think [the surgery] was because I was hurting. It was to make me feel good," she says.
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