If you have the means to do it, I’d say fix the scar. My sister had some injuries as a child that caused facial scaring similar to your daughters, and now as a woman in her mid 20′s she’s still upset about them.

My daughter got bit by a dog on her face at age 3. So far we have opted out of surgery for her and she is almost 11. Since it was at a friends house the insurance company has set up a trust for her and we will leave it up to her to decide when she is old enough. It has faded significantly over time and is hardly noticeable. I would try vitamin e oil for a while and see how it ends up looking

Thank you so much for these comments. This helps tremendously!

Steph

I can sympathize. Even when my boys got the chicken pox and I realized Axel was going to have a tiny little scar on his beautiful nose, I was upset. We love our children’s beautiful faces. But they’re going to get marks and scars and lines from living life, and we’re not going to be able to preserve their sweet little baby faces as-is. (Speaking for myself here.)

But scars fade, and even if they do stay, they can be beautiful, too. I know some scars are not, and it’s going to be up to you and you alone. I’d say if it’s important to you, weigh the risks of surgery with the benefits. Honestly, I always have a hard time with the different responses of people depending on boy or girl, but I do not have daughters so I can’t predict how I would respond and so I don’t judge people who say they react differently depending on if it’s a boy or girl.

Regardless, again I admire your honesty in sharing your struggles with this. Not everyone would. One of the things I love about you, Steph. If you are anything, you are real.

I have a scar right under my eye that is relatively obvious, and about an inch long. It bothers my mother tremendously that she “didn’t have a doctor fix it right” when I got the original cut at age 3. However, you should know that it has never bothered me- not once- and nobody has ever teased me for it. I’m not even entirely sure I would have noticed it at all until I was a self concious teenager, given that kids tend to assume everything is normal unless told otherwise. It just doesn’t matter at all. Everyone has scars here or there.

My son (he’s 3 1/2) has a scar from a cut a few months ago that he got on his nose. It’s pretty obvious. Every time I look at it, I think about my scar (and how I really, really don’t care about it and never have) and my mom (about how she still mentions it- and I’m in my mid 30′s) and that gives me great solace. Hilariously, when my mom visited recently, she looked at my son’s nose and said “Oh my gosh do you think that scar will fade?” with great distress… and I said that I don’t think so, but that’s OK.

When I was six, my older brother accidentally hit me in the face with a golf club, I had to get stitches, and I have a scar. Bothers my mom, doesn’t bother me. My daughter has a sizable scar on her forehead from when she took a head dive into the corner of Nana’s coffee table. It’s not the end of the world. She is still perfectly beautiful. Everyone has scars.

I have two scars on my face (one from when I was 4, and one from when I was 9). They have both faded significantly over the years, the one running down my nose (split it open after being pushed across asphalt on my face by a gust of wind…….yes, true story) is pretty much invisible, and the one under my lip (bit through my lip…) is small. They add character and they don’t bother me at all.

I have this weird thing with my eyes, not a scar. As a child it was so much more noticeable. I have like extra skin around the bridge of my nose that flows to the inside corner of my eye.

My mom always told me she loved it but if I didn’t we could correct it when I was older. She told me she wanted me to wait because you grow and your change and the extra skin might go away with time.

I totally get why you would worry over it but I think you should give it time. It might fade in 6 months, it might fade over a few years {like my chicken pox scars did}. Revisit it later when she is older if does effect her in a negative way. For now, just breathe. :D

I had a head injury when I was 18, and it left a scar on my forehead. The people who had known me before the scar was there always noticed it – but when I started college shortly after that, no one I met going forward really mentioned it – to them, it had always been there, so it wasn’t special. It wasn’t a scar on my face, it was just my face to them.
Even if your daughter has a scar, chances are as long as it isn’t made into a big deal, she won’t really care, and because she’s so young, none of her friends are going to care either because it will just be a part of her. It’ll just be her (very cute, very pretty, and sans huge, black stitches) face.
I hope she heals up soon! :)

I say wait and see. Try using Vitamin E oil or one of those scar lotions (mederma) as they can help in healing. Our little ones are very resilient and heal better than adults. Just don’t stress. If she sees your worry, then she may pick up on it! BTW…what a cutie she is!

I am going through something similar right now. My twin boys both have a minor birth defect on their bottoms-basically extra skin and fat at the top of their gluteal cleft. They are now 4 years old and I am wondering if we should go ahead and get this fixed now, so they are not made fun of later. It is a difficult decision.

When I was little little I was bitten by a dog and had a scar under my eye for my whole childhood. One of my first boyfriends said it looked like I’d cried an acid tear! It never bothered me (even when he said that). Now it’s totally faded–I don’t know when it did exactly–but you can still see it a tiny bit when I smile because it wrinkles up my crows’ feet on that side differently. HA! I would say not to do it and if it bothers her later on then pursue it. My family didn’t have means to pay to fix it (or insurance that would cover it) so it was always a non-issue and perhaps that affected the way I felt about it, like it was just no big deal, a part of me, not something that needed to be fixed…?

Waiting to make the right decision can’t hurt. Deciding too soon can. If she’s getting teased to the point of bullying (though I can’t imagine why – from the pic, it doesn’t look like it will make a disfiguring scar, but stranger things have happened), then take her to get it done. If it’s not bothering her and others aren’t making a big deal about it, I wouldn’t worry about it. Like you said – she may like that it gives her character.

Besides, all she has to do is bat those beautiful blue eyes, and no one is noticing that little line on her lip anyway, right?! ;)

I have a moon-shaped scar on my cheek from a tumble off a toilet seat when I was two (I was standing and whacked my face on the counter). It never really bothered me as a child, and now as an adult, I don’t even notice it when I look in the mirror.

My son split his eyelid open when he was a little guy. Even though it was hard at the time, my hubby and I decided to let it heal and then decide what to do. To our relief the scar wasn’t that noticeable and now that he’s 10, it has almost completely vanished.

You need to go with your gut and do what you think is best for your sweet girl. But if it were up to me, I would slather the cut with vitamin E and give it a chance to fully heal. Judging from the picture above, I suspect that any scaring will be minimal and will significantly fade over time. But if for some reason it doesn’t, or if you are unhappy with the way it looks, you can always meet with a plastic surgeon and get it fixed.

My take on it is she is 3 years old with 3 older brothers. She is probably going to have more accidents following in their footsteps.

My daughter was 4 years old when she fell and put her teeth through her upper lip. We were able to have the plastic surgeon perform the necessary surgery to give her 15 stitches. It was a huge gaping hole, that required stitches over stitches (as a matter of fact, I wouldn’t even take a picture of her because I never wanted her to see how bad it was!),

The resulting scar was significant and looked like an upside down mountain range on the left side of her lip. As a result, when we took pictures of her, she would comment that she didn’t like the photo because of her lip. We consulted a specialist in Atlanta, who told us to give her a full 18 months for the scar to heal completely. At the end of the 18 months, this past July, the craniofacial plastic surgeon did reparative surgery and her lip looks gorgeous!!!

My decision was easy for me to make. God did not create her with this lip, so I figured why not give her back the face God intended?

I say all this as the mother of not only my beautiful daughter, but also as the mother of a very handsome son with a scar on his lip which resulted from a scissors accident at school a year ago. He had 6 stitches, and never once have I thought about cosmetic surgery to repair it. It is different for boys — this scar gives him character and makes him look tough!

My daughter also had an accident at 2 where she smashed her teeth through her lip on the bottom. She now has a fine white line when she smiles on her bottom lip. I get a bit worried about it but it is nice to read all the comments about how only the Moms feel upset and the kids are just fine! It is also interesting to read Stephanie report that a plastic surgeon could fix the scar on her daughter’s lip. I had been wondering if that is even possible on the lip but never consulted a plastic surgeon.

I didn’t read what anyone else said…but as someone who has had open heart surgery at the age of 2 1/2 i can say, I have HUGE scars. If i wear a V-neck tee you can see the top of the chest one that extends 2/3 of the way down my torso. if i wear a bathing suit, you can see the back one that is called “a shark bite” scar because it wraps around my shoulder blade and ends just under my left breast. I also have indentation scars on the front of me from the drainage tubes that were left in me after the surgery. I can say, I will NEVER get cosmetic surgery to fix them. here is why.
1. As someone who has had open heart surgery, i won’t go under the knife AGAIN for cosmetic surgery.
2. these scars make me, me. They are badges of honor. They show what i have been through.

I have a HUGE problem with a parent who even thinks about wanting to put their small child under elective surgery. When I was little, every time my mom bathed me, she would say things like “wow what a neat scar! that is so cool!” and it was soon after I was PROUD of it. and still am to this day. The fact that you want to fix a tiny scar on her kinda makes me mad. I have giant ones on my body that really can’t be “fixed”. In fact, at some point in my life they will be cut back open.

If you think that there is something wrong with the scar and how she looks with it, then she will have a problem. I fully believe the reason why i have no problems wearing a bikini and baring all is because of my mom. She is the reason why I don’t hide in turtlenecks.

My daughter was born with a very large hemangioma from her lip up to her right ear. The 6 laser treatments she recieved in her first year were all medically necessary since the large vessels feeding the hemangioma were so close to her ear and throat and would have led to hearing and breathing problems. Usually these things clear up in a year a two, when they’re not as severe as my daughter’s.
BUT, in the comming years I’ll have a deision to make because there are remaining red spots on her face especially her lip, which laser treatments could fix, but which won’t be medically necessary. The surgeon told me to come back when she’s 4, before she starts school for some “touch-ups”, and I have to say that I will. I feel a certain responsibility to care for and maintain her body to the best of my ability until she is old enough to make those decisions.

i would use Mederma 1st for at least 6+ months and see if that helps before considering plastic surgery. I sympathize with both you and your daughter. We only want the best for our children. We want them to grow up with healthy bodies, minds and spirits and a healthy self image is very much apart of that. Good Luck I hope it fades in the least invasive way possible!

I can see what you mean but I would never do that as I happen to love people who have an upper lip scar, most often from being born with a cleft lip, but how it came to be doesn’t matter. My husband has one and it’s almost like I knew from the start I was going to spend my life with someone who has one because I was drawn to people who had one from I was little & always found those who have one the most beautiful people of all.

Just wanted to make a point of that what is considered “perfect” or “flawless” doesn’t appeal to everyone. Do you really want to mess with fate?
However, if she’s really unhappy with it already then I think you should try to make it as unnoticable as possible. But don’t do it because YOU think it’s not pretty enough. And don’t be so sexist! Why would it not be OK on a girl???