This is Chloe's hemangioma story told by her momma Chelsea:
Hemangiomas are pretty common: 1 in 10 babies will have one. More common in caucasian girls for some reason. Its made up of tiny blood vessels, and gets hot if Chloe gets really angry đĄ.
When she was born it looked like a tiny bruise. The hemangiomas tend to grow very fast for the first few months, and then generally stop.
They usually start to shrink at about 1 year of age, and usually fade completely away by 5-10 years old.
It doesnât hurt and its not contagious lol. There are some treatment options but we as parents decided to see the progression before deciding on that.
On one hand its completely cosmetic and on the other hand kids and even adults can be terribly mean.
We were given two treatment options for Chloeâs strawberry hemangioma as it was continuing to grow and close to the eye area.
The first was to start medication and await the results and use laser treatments need be.
The second option was to start laser treatments immediately. We didnât like the medication option as with all medications there are potential side effects.
We decided to proceed with the laser treatments. Over the course of 10 months she had 11 treatments. I would be lying if I said they werenât painful and uncomfortable as we had to hold her down but they did only last approximately 3-5 seconds and she did always get chocolate after đ
*Picture on the left before treatment and the right is a week after last treatment.
Regardless it broke our hearts to see her in any kind of pain even momentary. The rest of the birthmark will go away on its own over the next few years.
As parents we are constantly making those hard decisions for our children. The only thing that we could do beyond medical advice was to think if this was what we would have wanted our parents to do for us if we had been in this situation.
I hope she always knows how beautiful she is with and without her strawberry đ
Follow Chloe on Instagram: @chloe.b.azzi
If you like to share your story, do not hesitate to write to hemangiomamomma@gmail.com.
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