Speaking of plastic surgery...
My girl has an hemangioma (strawberyy mark) on her lower lip. It is a vascular birthmark that we were told will be gone when she is three. Well, she's almost four and while it is a tad smaller than last year, it is still prominent.
At birth it was huge. We had laser treatment to take out the glaring red and cortisone injections when she was only 6 months old as it was growing so rapidly at that point it was interfering with her nursing.
SO here is the delimma. I have met people from 19-over 40 years old who still have obvious hemangiomas. They NEVER went away.
She gets asked alot what happened to her lip, did she fall, ooo-what an owie. None of these thign really regitered to her until lately. I have noticed she tends to back up when peopel say anythign to her (or me) about it. Physically she takes a couple of steps back and closer to me. I am guessing she is becoming uncomfortable about it. We have doen eveything we could think of to make it a casual thign. Heck, when she was born and my oldest was but 3 1/2, HE would tell people it was a hemangioma, there was many a person who didn't want to admit they didn't know what that was because a 3 yo said it to them...
SO.
There are surgeries that can get rid of the thing, but they require general anesthesia and that creeps me out big time. also, if removed, there is a slight chance it may come back slightly when she is in puberty due to rushing hormones.
Part of me says it is part of her and we should celbrate that, but that part of me is a mature, well-balanced 34 year old, not a shy 4 yo.
There is also a chance it will go away on it's own in the next 3-10 years. But will I have screwed up her confidence by then?
She will have a scar already no matter what because the dang thing ulcerated wehn she was 2 mos old (boy was that fun!)
I don't know...I lean very far away from surgery, but at the same time, if it is removed now, she will likely have very little memory of it if any at all.
What would you do with your kid?
*edited to take out pic*
"certified kick ass by dreammama"
The thing about hemangiomas is that sometimes they do fade on their own. My niece had one across her cheek as a babe, and it did go away by the time she started school (not totally, but enough that it seemed more like a birthmark than an "owie"). I am creeped out by General Anesthesia also. If you have noticed it shrinking, even a tiny bit, I'd hold off on surgery for awhile. She sure looks like a pretty confident gal to me - I wouldn't worry too much about wrecking her self image. And love the watermelon rind hat - what a cutie!
"Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system." - Dorothy Day
"Step off my big ass."
- Anthromom
could she be cuter? and the watermelon hat? hehe
i dunno mama...it's a hard one! i recently had a bone cyst removed from my wrist, not remotely for cosmetics but because it would flare up painfully. it was so big i used to call it my little symbiant and ask it for advice lol.
no answers but maybe some questions to think about...
is it going to get in the way of her confidence in a big way? do a large percentage of idiots come up and grill her? does she feel like this is the only thing that shallow people see first and do we care what shallow people think? is she unable to express her personality b/c of it? will it get in the way more at a more awkward time like middle school? i wish i had a hard opinion for you, but i'm with you...it's not an easy choice. i do see a huge difference here btwn this being some spoiled kid elective plastic surgery and a simple surgery to make a kid more comfortable...i don't have some tacit feeling that it's WRONG, you know? i'm behind you either way!
ged rid of it. None of this celebrate it, crap. Middle school is hell. Hell, elementry school is hell for some. I know i was a whopping 10- 15 pounds overweight. Do you think at 12 years old that when shes called 'Herpes girl" and the like that she will rise above it? Her freshman year of highschool when people are saying the dumbest thing ever like "Did you burn it on a crackpipe" "Its from sucking too much dick!" Loudly announced in front of everybody. and garbage like that? I had kids tease me because I had moderate acne and that played in the back of my head during dinner with my parents. If I did open up to my parents they would fuel me with these bullshit cliches and would only depress me more. Pretty much walk it off in a nice way which drew attention to the fact they had no idea at all what i was going through. It was almost better to not say anything because by the end of the lecture, i would feel like my mom was almost making it out like i was superficial and shallow. A scar is no big deal. Theres makeup for that. But seriously this will happen. Not maybe, not might, will. And what are the chances you have the 1 in 1000 child thats gonna not care? Maybe if she was a boy, but even then I doubt it. General anestesia, or Herpes Girl amongst other wonderful lovely nicknames? Sorry to be so harsh, I am just looking at it from a 12 year old standpoint and really wanna get it through to you what i believe will happen. And u love her and all, but do you grab your flab and go "yeah, theres more of me to love! Wohhoo!" Do u compliment the woman in the grocery store on her big old honkin' zit and the end of her nose? Those white blood cells keeping your skin from getting infected!How amazing?" Probably not. And this birthmark will be scene by your daughter as a zit or flab.
I had to answer a much simpler one myself, DS has some disfiguring scars on his hand when he was two. I decided to forgo the surguries reccomended by his ped. I felt that if the scars were interfereing with his life, then we could reconsider. DS's scars have faded and thinned (ped told me they would thicken and harden, possible making it impossible for him to use that hand at all), and he's got full use of it. I'm glad I didn't get the surguries. It really got me thinking though. I feel that if there is something like this that is adversely affecting my child, and I have the power to fix it, I want to fix it. Your daughter is beautiful. I hate to think of her in pain, but the thought of her under a knife (laser, whatever) hurts too. Do you feel that this is going to affect her growth, socially? It really does look like she's got a big owie on her lip, and if it never goes away, people are going to be mentioning it all her life. Is it something you can do in a year or two if there is no change?
If it was my kid, I would probably go ahead with the surgury if I felt like it wasn't going away on it's own, but it would be a really hard process. *HUGS*
it took some getting used to, but i'm glad she has it now, and she's not at all self conscious about it. i was told, "by the time she's six, you won't know it was ever there."
this pic is from february.
i keep an updated picture of her and her birthmark, in case of an emergency. it went from a red spot at birth, then gradually got darker and puffier till it was an immense blob on her forearm that wabbled around when she toddled around. it grew till she was maybe 4, rather than start to shrink when she was two, which was what i was told. at six well, you can see it's still pretty big. in fact, i went to the doctor yesterday and my doctor was so distracted by it that she started to comment and question on it, and looked it up in a book to make sure that it's "normal" for it to be that raised. i think that may have been the first time dd felt like there may be something "wrong" with it, but that passed when doc found a pictutre in a book. when she was a baby-toddler, she sucked on it. it started to fade when she was maybe three.
i have been approached by lots of people who have had them and showed me where. not one of them had perfect, intact skin where the birth mark was. the adults i saw with the least residual marks, had loose pale skin on the site of the birthmark, almost looking like a burn scar. so i didn't ever expect it to disappear, despite what i was told by pediatricians. now, your daughter's is on her lip. there are a lot more blood vessels in lips. but skin there is puffy anyway, right? she can put lipstick on it if she so chooses. but if she gets cut, there may be a distict line on her lip, extending out of it, maybe even making her lipline crooked. no one really knows how they develop, it's hard to judge by this picture if it should shrink or lose color. but i can tell you that dd's never got any bigger than when she was 4. plus the growth was very very slow by then. so i would think that you can safely expect it not to get bigger. but her face will get bigger, making the birthmark look smaller. i would wait on any surgery. they keep improving their methods, and if you wait till her body absorbs some of those extra blood vessels, and see if she wants surgery later, the methods they use to prevent scarring will be better. just a thought.
"I've done a lot of things in my life I ain't too proud of, and the things I am proud of are disgusting." - Mo Szyslak
"I've done a lot of things in my life I ain't too proud of, and the things I am proud of are disgusting." - Mo Szyslak
one of my best friends growing up had one under her chin that hung down. it got smaller each year, but it didn't disappear completely until junior high or high school. she was extremely self-conscious about it and extremely relieved when it became unnoticeable. {it became the pale, stretchy patch someone described below, but it was under her chin and so, invisible.}
when she was really little, she was outgoing, but as she got older, and the other kids got meaner about it {and her crossed eye which she chose to have surgery to correct when she was eleven}, she got more timid. she's a happy, well adjusted adult with two kids of her own and a solid career as an r.n., so it didn't keep her from getting on with life or anything. still, i know that as a kid, she would have wished it away if she could have, and she might say the same as an adult.
"if i pass for other than what i am/do you feel safer?" ~lani ka'ahumanu
"if i pass for other than what i am, do you feel safer?" ~ lani ka'ahumanu
dragon knows dragon
If it were my kid I would wait another year or so, then have the surgery done if it didn't go away. I don't think you will have screwed up her confidence.
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thank you all for sharing your experiences with this and opinions...
. And thanks for the horrifying view into sad, insecure children's minds. I feel that if a kid is going to say that sort of thing, they will find SOMETHING to insult about. even if she were perfectly "normal" a kid like that will make somethignup to tease her about. Our original plane was to wait until she was older and talk to her about it then, like when she is ten or so. Then I got to thinking thatif it was removed now... she would'nt even really remember it...And I am truly hoping that DH and I will be able to help her deal with idiots and to help her fget it fixed if it becomes and issue., but you never know...can't see the future even when I really really really want to.
Trula and Gigi- I am leaning toward doing this. It is what we have been doing for almost 4 years now, so another year or two may noy make a lot of difference.
farty-Thanks for sharinfg the pic of yer gils arm. It is reassuring to know that it looks so tame now(They are so hooribly red at the onset...) and that it started to shrink at 4. I think I just need some reasurrance that it is still possible to have it go away on it's own...It is amazing that Dr.s are STILL saying that they are gone by 3 at the latest. What athign to tell someone! sheesh...
Batt- I shouldn't have said celebrate it,, that makes it sound like we will have the big lip party or somethign. I should have said, "embrace it" as in allow it to be part of her and who she is. Which you may not agree with either
Sis-thanks for the questions, they helped a lot...I couldn't care less what shollow people think, but I am far from 4 yo...
I was watching her closely today and noticed that really if it is anyone she doesn't know that says hi to her, she steps back. It is just that most people she doesn't know ask about the lip so I assumed it was the lip comment that made her back up...perhaps it is just the fact that a stranger is talking to her. I will have to observe a few more days and see what happens. As she is only i preschool, the kids are fine. they ask her what happened, she says it's a birthmark, they move on. It's the stup[id adults that fixate on it. I know they are only curious, but gezz, look it up! don't harass my kid...
Thnaks again all!
"I should care, but I don't"--my lovely 3 year old daughter...