HfMD Scar Not Gone Yet: What I Learned As A Mom Waiting For Scars To Fade
It’s the first warm week of April, and I’m folding laundry on the living room rug when my four-year-old Lila yanks her thick winter tights off in one messy tug, sending one elasticated foot flying into my pile of clean socks. She dives for the bin of warm-weather clothes, digging past the stained leggings and outgrown swimsuits to find the sparkly denim shorts she’s been begging to wear. As she stands up to pull them on, I glance down at her left shin. Two pale pink, slightly indented marks are still there, one the size of a pea, the other smaller than my pinky nail. I’d completely forgotten they existed.
Lila got hand, foot, and mouth disease last November, right before Thanksgiving. It was a bad strain—she had blisters all over her mouth, the palms of her hands, the soles of her feet, and a full body rash that sprouted big, itchy blisters up and down her legs. I kept her nails trimmed short, slathered on the anti-itch cream the doctor recommended, held her hands when she wanted to scratch, but one night she woke up crying and had already broken two of the blisters open on her shin. I called the pediatrician first thing the next morning, got her in to check that it wasn’t infected, and was told everything would be fine. “Any scars will fade in 8 to 12 weeks,” she told me. “Most are gone completely by three months.” I nodded, wrote that down, and didn’t think about it again. Between holiday travel, cold and flu season, and Lila living in long pants all winter, the marks were out of sight, out of mind.
I pulled out my phone that night after Lila went to bed, typed the exact phrase into Google that I’d seen other moms post: “HfMD scar not gone yet.” It had been five full months, more than twice the 12 week timeline the doctor gave me. What came up was exactly what you’d expect: a dozen message board threads where half the commenters said scars never stick around after HfMD, so you must have done something wrong by letting her scratch, and the other half linked to expensive dermatologist treatments, from silicone gels to laser resurfacing, that promise to erase any trace. I stayed up an hour scrolling, working myself up into that quiet mom panic: should I book a dermatologist appointment? Is this going to be something she’s self conscious about when she’s older? Am I overreacting for caring about a tiny mark on her leg?
That question got answered a few days later, when we were at our neighborhood playground. Lila was running through the mulch in her new sparkly shorts, and her best friend Mia caught up to her, pointed at her shin, and said “What’s those spots?” I was pushing Lila’s baby brother on the swing a few feet away, and I froze, waiting for the awkward moment, waiting for Lila to get upset. Instead, Lila stopped, leaned down, poked the bigger scar with her index finger, and said “They’re my hand foot mouth marks. I got them when I was sick last winter, and I got to eat ten popsicles in one day. It was awesome.” Mia’s eyes went wide, then she pulled up her own shorts to show a pale scar on her knee. “I got this when I fell off my bike and needed three stitches,” she said. Then they both turned and ran after the ice cream truck that was turning onto the street, and that was that.
I walked over to the bench after that, and sat down, and realized I’d been the only one making this a big deal. I talked to Lila’s pediatrician about it a week later at her four-year checkup, and she confirmed what I’d started to figure. Deep HfMD blisters, especially ones that get scratched open, don’t always follow the 12 week fading timeline. For some kids, especially kids who are prone to visible scarring, it can take 18 to 24 months for marks to fade completely, and sometimes a tiny faint mark stays forever. That’s totally normal, and totally harmless. No infection, no long term issues, just a mark.
If you’re in the same spot, with HfMD scars that haven’t faded after a few months, the first thing I’d tell you to do is check in with your regular pediatrician first, not Google. Most of the time, it’s just normal slow healing, and you don’t need a specialist. If your pediatrician is worried about it being something else, they can refer you, but nine times out of ten, you don’t need to spend hundreds on a dermatologist visit right off the bat.
Second, if you do want to do something small at home to help speed up fading, the pediatrician told me over-the-counter thin silicone scar sheets are safe for kids over two, and you just cut one to size, put it on over the scar after bath time at night, and take it off in the morning. They cost around $15 for a pack that lasts a month, which is way cheaper than any fancy treatment, and it’s low effort. I do it when I remember, which is about four nights a week, and I can already see the marks getting a little lighter. If I forget, it’s not the end of the world.
Third, don’t treat the scar like it’s something to be embarrassed of or hide before your kid even thinks about it. When I first saw the marks, I almost told Lila to wear long pants every time we went out, just until they faded. But after the playground moment, I realized that kids don’t care about scars until adults tell them they should care. If another kid asks, just let your kid answer. If your kid says they don’t like their mark, you can say “It’s okay if you don’t like it, it’s still just a part of you” instead of panicking and promising it’ll go away or jumping to fix it.
The marks are still there, five months after Lila got over HfMD, and they’ll probably still be there this summer when we go to the pool. I won’t make her wear a long rash guard to cover them. Some days I catch myself staring, still that little voice in my head that worries that everything has to be perfect for her. But then she’ll run over, lift up her leg to show a new mosquito bite, and laugh about how her leg has so many spots, and I remember. Scars are just stories, most of the time. This one’s just a story about a winter where she ate a lot of popsicles and got better. It doesn’t need to be erased.
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