O n July 13, 1999, Summer Laurel Gleason entered our world. She had an abundance of strawberry-blonde hair and a very large bruise covering the left side of her face. The following morning, the pediatrician on call at the hospital declared Summer to be healthy and said she had no sign of a birthmark under the bruise. My husband Craig and I found this reference a bit confusing, but because she said there was no sign, we didn’t worry about it. We were told to take Summer to our family pediatrician to make sure that she didn’t develop jaundice because of the bruising. Summer’s older sister, India, met her long-awaited baby sister the following morning and declared her perfect in every way. Over the next week, the bruise didn’t turn the ugly green and yellow that healing bruises usually do. Instead it faded to a very pale pink (Fig 1, A). When our pediatrician saw Summer a week later she confirmed that Summer was perfectly healthy, with no jaundice. She also informed us that Summer did indeed have a birthmark, and that it was nothing to worry about, that they usually go away in the first year. Upon our return home, Craig searched on the Internet for information about birthmarks. After a short time, he told me that we needed to take Summer back to the pediatrician and find out exactly what type of birthmark she had because, depending on the type, she could develop some serious complications. We returned to the doctor’s office the next day and presented her with our findings, at which point she said she was out of her depth and referred us to a local dermatologist. This was the beginning of our journey into a whole new world. It wasn’t clear if Summer had a hemangioma or a port-wine stain, because her birthmark showed characteristics of both. It covered the left side of her face and stopped at the midline, it was flat with no signs of becoming raised, but it was getting slowly darker each day. The dermatologist was unable to make a diagnosis and