Q&A: What should I do about my baby's birthmark?
I have a nine-month-old baby girl. She is quite healthy and smart, but she has a something called a hemangiomas. My pediatrician says that it's a kind of birthmark, which is common in some babies. He says that it's a concentration of blood capillaries, just under the skin. This birthmark has become infected, and looks quite scary. She screams and yells when we change her, or if someone accidentally touches that area. Can you suggest a remedy?
Hemangiomas are a type of birthmark that are composed of blood vessels and can appear on virtually any area of the body. The vast majority of what you are describing are either called strawberry or cavernous hemangiomas. Rarely, this type of lesion could be a more serious vascular malformation. Your doctor would need to ascertain that.
Assuming that this is a strawberry or cavernous hemangioma, the natural history is well known. These usually grow rapidly during the first months of life but stop growing, usually by one year. After this, they begin a shrinking process and many are completely gone between the ages of two and five. Cavernous lesions tend to be bigger, but 90 percent of these are barely visible by the age of nine.
Knowing the favorable outcome with no treatment, it is generally recommended to treat only those angiomas that impinge upon eyes or mouths or throats, where they prevent the normal function of the body. Another reason to treat would be if it was very large or if it were repeatedly getting traumatized leading to bleeding or infection. Treatments include surgery, instilling agents into the hemangioma that choke off the vessels or pulse laser treatments.
Please rest assured though that nothing you did or didn’t do during pregnancy caused your daughter to get this problem.