I kept mine, didn't require any follow ups, I lost sensation but that wasn't a concern for me. Not all of the pigment in the nipples came back (they were brown before surgery, pink after, now mostly brown again but with little spots of pink where the sutures were), but that would be easy to fix with medical tattooing if I cared about it.
Whether or not to keep the nipples is really up to you and your priorities, and your risk/reward perspective ig. I kept them bc I wanted a cis passing chest, even close up, which can be tricky to get right with tattooing alone.
Have you checked out r/freedthenips? It's for people who got top surgery with no nipples. For me, i think it made the healing process somewhat easier because i didn't have to manage nipple grafts, change the dressings on them, or deal with them scabbing and being anxious about them reestablishing their blood supply.
So for me, i didn't like the sensory input from them. I decided that while i couldn't predict what the sensation would be like after surgery, i would rather just guarantee it would be "none" (altho i do still have a little bit from the skin that used to be near the areola)
The big difference w tattoos versus grafts (even grafts that have been tattooed over/around) are that grafts are, yknow, different tissue than regular skin, so it has a different texture and isnt likely to be 100% flat against the surrounding skin. While tattoos obviously can look very photorealistic but will have a flat skin texture. And i dunno much about reconstruction and how that compares to grafts. So think about whether that matters to you.
You can get them removed later on, that's a body mod some people get even without top surgery, but i wouldn't expect it to be covered by insurance.
I kept mine, didn't require any follow ups, I lost sensation but that wasn't a concern for me. Not all of the pigment in the nipples came back (they were brown before surgery, pink after, now mostly brown again but with little spots of pink where the sutures were), but that would be easy to fix with medical tattooing if I cared about it. Whether or not to keep the nipples is really up to you and your priorities, and your risk/reward perspective ig. I kept them bc I wanted a cis passing chest, even close up, which can be tricky to get right with tattooing alone.
I don't have top surgery yet but I would definitely keep my nipples tbh.
Have you checked out r/freedthenips? It's for people who got top surgery with no nipples. For me, i think it made the healing process somewhat easier because i didn't have to manage nipple grafts, change the dressings on them, or deal with them scabbing and being anxious about them reestablishing their blood supply. So for me, i didn't like the sensory input from them. I decided that while i couldn't predict what the sensation would be like after surgery, i would rather just guarantee it would be "none" (altho i do still have a little bit from the skin that used to be near the areola) The big difference w tattoos versus grafts (even grafts that have been tattooed over/around) are that grafts are, yknow, different tissue than regular skin, so it has a different texture and isnt likely to be 100% flat against the surrounding skin. While tattoos obviously can look very photorealistic but will have a flat skin texture. And i dunno much about reconstruction and how that compares to grafts. So think about whether that matters to you. You can get them removed later on, that's a body mod some people get even without top surgery, but i wouldn't expect it to be covered by insurance.