A mother’s job is to protect her child from harm, and this includes making sure her children feel happy and self-confident. Although some mother’s may raise children to accept the way they look, one mom has decided to take matters into her own hands, getting her two-year-old daughter plastic surgery.
If you are like most people, right about now you may be thinking that this woman is extremely vain. However, the mom is defending her decision to have her little girl go under the knife, claiming it wasn’t done with superficial intentions.
Sasha Emmons’ daughter Chloe was born with a unique strawberry colored mark on her head known as a hemangioma birthmark. At first, Sasha and her husband Justin were told by their physician that the mark may get a little bigger, but should go away by the time Chloe turned two. However, this wasn’t the case.
When at first the birthmark looked like a small bruise on Chloe’s head, in reality, a hemangioma birthmark is a benign blood-vessel tumor that approximately 1 in 10 babies (usually girls) develop. The tumor eventually grew to the size of a golf ball, but the doctors told the parents to ignore it, reassuring them that the mark would fade within a few years. Yet, the more time that passed, the larger the birthmark grew. It even kept hair from growing on Chloe’s head, causing the little girl to become more known for her birthmark instead of her natural cute and spunky ways.
Sasha began to fear that this is all people would ever notice about Chloe so she made an appointment with a plastic surgeon at the distaste of her physician, who brushed off the birthmark as merely a cosmetic imperfection.
While Sasha does want to raise her daughter to believe that beauty comes from within, she couldn’t ignore an uneasy feeling about the birthmark and felt there was more to it than just its puffy appearance.
After doing some research, Sasha and her husband found the Vascular Birthmarks Foundation, and Milton Waner, M.D., an expert on hemangiomas. During the consultation, Dr. Waner explained to the family that most pediatricians don’t know the full details of what a hemangioma really is or how long it will take to go away. He informed the family that it can actually take as long as 10 years to resolve, giving plenty of time for a young child to feel self-conscious and embarrassed. Even if the birthmark did fade, because it was located just past Chloe’s hairline, she would still be left with a large section on her head without hair.
Fearing for her daughter and the kind of future she might have, Sasha felt that if Chloe were left to grow older with the birthmark and bald spot, she might never forgive her.
It was then that the Emmons family chose to have the birthmark removed when Chloe was two years old. The plastic surgery was a success, only leaving the young child with a small three-inch scar that can easily be concealed by parting her hair to the side or it can be removed at a later date when Chloe is old enough to make the decision for herself.
Chloe is now a second-grader with beautiful long blonde hair. The hemangioma no longer defines her, nor will affect her quality of life. Although we must all learn to accept ourselves for who we are, there are many advancements in the field of plastic surgery that can correct certain birth defects, like the birthmark on Chloe’s head. While this hemangioma was benign, there are many others which are not and removing them can save countless lives.
While it is a hard decision Sasha had to make as a parent, it’s hard to believe others wouldn’t do the same in her position. Plastic surgery is usually performed on patients who are 18 years of age and older because of the body’s tendency to change and grow while young. Here at Shafer Plastic Surgery, Dr. David Shafer would never perform a procedure on a child because of the parents’ selfish cosmetic wishes, nor would he ever perform a surgery that would even risk an adult patient’s well-being. However, there are certain treatments that can correct deformities, drastically changing the child’s life for the better.
One of the most common types of treatments for children involves plastic surgery to repair a cleft lip or palate. Cleft lip (cheiloschisis) and cleft palate (palatoschisis), which involve an incomplete formation of the upper lip or the roof of the mouth, are among the most common birth defects affecting children in North America. Plastic surgery can correct a cleft lip or palate, improving the child’s ability to eat, speak, hear, and even breathe, not solely improving their appearance.
There are always unique cases to consider when trying to determine whether or not a child should undergo plastic surgery, and a large portion of them are cases involving deformities that can cause pain to the child or hinder their ability to function normally.
