The Story Behind Birthmarks

Do you ever wonder where the birthmarks on your skin come from that you’ve had for as long as you can remember? Many people have them, but there are a number of people who don’t.

Birthmarks are spots or patches on the skin that are first noticed at birth or shortly a little bit after. Birthmarks generally result from an overgrowth of a structure that is normally present in the skin. For example, an overgrowth of blood vessels produces vascular birthmarks or haemangiomas; an overgrowth of pigment cells produces congenital nevi or moles.

They normally come in different shapes and sizes in various colors. They fall into two main categories: vascular and pigmented. Vascular birthmarks occur when blood vessels in a particular area of your skin don’t form the way they should. Pigmented ones show when an excess amount of pigment cells are in one area. These cells are what give our skin its natural color.  

According to https://birthmark.org/

• 1 in 10 children are born with a vascular birthmark.
• 1 percent of children born with a vascular birthmark (1 in 1,000 of all children) will require medical intervention.
• A port-wine stain, a type of vascular birthmark, occurs in 3 of 1,000 infants.

The mysterious marks sometimes have unusual stories behind them.

“My birthmark makes me believe in hope and that there can and are theories behind them.” shares Abigail Royer, junior.  “My parents and I believe mine came from an angel. It is a pair of kissy lips by my hip bone. The reason we say that it came from an angel because when my grandmother died (before I was born). She had a bad hip, which makes us imagine that she is still with us and that she loves me.”

According to “The Epoch Times,” there is a legend about an old woman died in Thailand with the wish to reincarnate as a boy. Her daughter dipped a finger in white paste and marked the back of the woman’s neck with the paste. Not long after the woman’s death, the daughter gave birth to a son with a white mark on the back of his neck that mirrored the white paste left on the woman’s neck. When the boy was old enough to talk, he would claim possession of things that belonged to his grandmother as though they’d always been his.

Do you have a bizarre birthmark story?