Doctors Are Stumped After Mom Discovers Mysterious Black Mark in Baby’s Mouth

Parents take note of every little detail about their kids. So when a mysterious birthmark, or in this case black mark, appears out of nowhere, it raises some red flags.

Darian Depreta was playing with her daughter Bella when she noticed the roof of her little girl’s mouth was black. After she tried and failed to wipe it off, she called her own mother in a panic. Moments after she made a doctor’s appointment and rushed her daughter to the office.

Once there, she met with the nurse practitioner who also tried and failed to wipe it off. The nurse even admitted she’d never seen anything like it before. After consulting with doctors, they suggested it may be a birthmark and wanted the baby girl to meet with two specialists. Depreta, however, insisted it wasn’t a birthmark and something that could have only formed in the last few days because she frequently cleans her daughter’s mouth. That’s when the nurse practitioner decided to take another look at the “medical mystery.”

After the nurse “really gets in there trying to scrape it,” they crack the case “only to find out it was cardboard from a box Bella chewed [that was] stuck to the roof of her mouth.” After crying and then ultimately laughing for five minutes straight, the mom jokingly vows she “can never show my face in that office again.”

The Facebook post has quickly made the rounds, where it’s been shared more than 18,000 times. While most think the story had a hilarious turn of events, not everyone agrees. A handful of people have called the mom out for making light of what could have caused her daughter to choke.

“Yes, she could have choked on it and I’m thanking God she did not. The only reason it was posted was because after crying, panicking and trying to figure out what it was—the doctors didn’t even know—she was okay. The laugh was after the storm of it all,” Depreta adds in an update to her post. “And I don’t ‘let’ my baby chew on cardboard. She’s teething and tries to chew on everything. She just so happened to find a box while I was loading the dishwasher, which I of course took off of her right away. I just didn’t realize a piece got stuck up there. I checked her mouth for small pieces right away.”

As the mom says, all that matters is that Bella is safe and the family was able to get to the bottom of the bizarre black mark.

Please note: The Bump and the materials and information it contains are not intended to, and do not constitute, medical or other health advice or diagnosis and should not be used as such. You should always consult with a qualified physician or health professional about your specific circumstances.