Bliss Sleeping Peel Liver Spot Lifter: Revisited, Super-Fun Melasma Edition

So. Perhaps this belongs more in the Smackdown Updates & Follow-Ups category, as I am updating my own advice. Back in March, I wrote about my uber-underwhelming experience with the Bliss Sleeping Peel Liver Spot Lifter, which I purchased in hopes of fading an over two-year-old sun/age spot on my face. The spot was a souvenir from my first pregnancy, and a testament to Why You Always Always Wear Sunscreen, You Stupid Stupid Girl.

The Bliss serum did nothing. Like, beyond nothing. I was annoyed. I shoved in the back of my cosmetics drawer, where beauty solutions go to die and expire and congeal.
Then I went to the beach this summer. I wore sunscreen! Neutrogena’s Age Shield for Faces! SPF 70! I did not mess around.

But by the end of the weekend I noticed the telltale brownish, spotty signs of melasma — the dreaded mask of pregnancy — cropping up across my nose and on my upper lip. Ah! And gah!

What to do? Ignore it? Live with it? Cross my fingers and hope that it didn’t get any worse and that it faded after I gave birth? I opted to dig out the Bliss Spot Lifter instead, figuring that doing SOMETHING would be better than NOTHING, even though I had no real reason to expect any results at all.

And wouldn’t you know it, the stuff actually worked this time! The brownish discoloration across my nose is completely gone, and while the stuff on my upper lip is a bit more tenacious (and very apt to return after ANY sun exposure, even with sunblock), a thin coating of the Bliss really does fade it significantly overnight — enough that you can’t even see it after I’ve put on foundation.

So…okay! I sort of owe Bliss a retraction, albeit one dripping in caveats: you need to use this stuff on NEW spots and discoloration, and you need to use it over and over and over. I’m hoping my skin will STOP WITH THE SPOTTING after I have the baby, but for now I do need to use the peel at least a couple times a week to keep the dark spots from becoming too noticeable. User reviews at the Bliss website report success with older spots, but I can’t report similar results. (I did start dabbing the peel on the original spotty thing on my cheek while treating the melasma, but once again, saw no change.)

But! If you’re pregnant or recently were pregnant, or have just come back from a sun-drenched tropical paradise spotted with fresh brown spots, or HOLY CRAP, WHY DO MY HANDS SUDDENLY LOOK LIKE MY GRANDMOTHER’S, I’d say go ahead and give the Bliss product (which is very gentle and non-irritating) a try before heading to the dermatologist for something harsh and prescription-strength and skin-bleaching. (Which they probably won’t give you during pregnancy anyway, if your doctor is anything like mine — I’d have to be crawling with melanoma for my dermatologist to say ANYTHING other than “that should go away after the baby is born.”) (HINT: NOT ALWAYS, THANKS A LOT.)