Port Wine Stain?

[MNmom]

Do any of you mamas have LO's with a port wine stain birth mark?
My brand new daughter has a pretty large one on her face and I am looking for advice on what to expect. We have an appt with a specialist next month, but I am looking for support! Do your LO's stain affect their eyes, brain etc or just cosmetic? We think Amelias is just cosmetic, but we won't reallly know without a cat scan.

[marilynloewen]

My son was born with one on his back, it is still there, but it has lightened up considerably compared to how it was at birth. All I was told by his pediatrician at his first checkup is that they can sometimes turn into a hemangioma, which from my understanding is a bubbly, raised up looking mass that is comprised of vascular tissue very close to the surface, so to keep an eye on it and make sure it stays flat.

[kristinc]

The ones on the face & head can be more problematic as the pp said it is basically a ball of blood vessels that grown out of control. Being that it is on the face it can affect the optic nerve and/or the brain if it gets out of control. But until you have the ct scan they can't really know the prognosis. Is it def a port wine stain and not a strawberry hemangioma?

[MNmom]

The ped is pretty sure it is a port wine stain, but we have not seen the vascular specialist yet.

[rileykidmama]

Dd had a hemangioma on her face. When she was born, it looked like a "stork bite", but soon grew and darkened and turned into a hemangioma. It was relatively small, though, right in the middle of her forehead, so it didn't affect her at all. She's 3.5 yrs old now and it went away some time ago on its own with no laser treatment or surgery. The funniest thing a person has ever said to her was, "What'd ya do, fall on yer face?" (We live in central/southern Indiana.)