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Bald Is Beautiful
Is Genetics Behind a Baby's Lack of Hair?
By Shannon McKelden
A good rule of thumb for new parents, though, is not to get too attached to the color or texture of the hair your baby comes with. It's highly possible it'll be replaced with completely different hair within a few weeks or months. It could take a while.
"[My daughter] was born with the brightest, reddest hair I have ever seen, which promptly fell out, leaving her with a perfectly smooth, bald head in the shape of a peach," says Kathy Teel, a mom from Mount Vernon, Mo. "Added to that, she's very fair, so any hair she did have was so fine and pale that you couldn't see it. She didn't really get any hair to speak of until she was almost 3, and we always said it was a good thing that she had such a perfect head."
Once the hair has fallen out, it's perfectly normal to have it take a while to come back in. "The changeover to having the hair fall out and then grow in is gradual and takes weeks," says Charlotte Cowan, a Boston-based pediatrician who writes children's books dealing with medical issues (www.drhippo.com).
Go ahead and use this time to practice patience. And, if you're the parent of a baby girl, you might want to invest in some stick-on hair bows. Bald babies seem to receive an increased number of "Is it a boy or a girl?" questions.
Aside from a difference in thickness and/or texture between Baby's first hair and what they end up with, color is also up for grabs.
"By about 6 months, most babies will have some hair on their heads indicative of their own true color," Dr. Cowan says. "The color of the baby's 'birth hair' is unrelated to the color of the hair he/she will ultimately grow. I have sen children born with heads of black hair only to have them lose it – to come in weeks later very, very blond."
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