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Bald Is Beautiful
Is Genetics Behind a Baby's Lack of Hair?
By Shannon McKelden
There's no scientific term for it – like Infant Pattern Baldness – but the condition is actually quite common. Babies who are bald as bowling balls, sometimes, as with my own daughter, long into toddlerhood. I can't count how often I was asked how old my "son" was, as if the frilly pink dresses weren't a big enough gender clue.
Some babies are born bald. Others, who start out with a nice head of hair, lose it and have to start all over again. Some develop bald spots in odd areas on the scalp, making styling impossible. Is baby baldness a genetic thing, or perhaps nutritional? Should you be concerned?
"It is a genetic thing or even an ethnic thing," says pediatrician Dr. Bud Zukow, author of BABY: An Owner's Manual (Beaufort Books, 2007). "Just like any other characteristic, some babies just have more hair than others."
Stacie Haight Connerty believes that genetics are behind her babies' lack of hair. All three were either born bald or with thick hair that fell out and took a very long time to grow back. Like mother, like child. "My mother says that I was bald until I was 3, and my full head of hair did not grow in until I was a little over 4," says the Atlanta, Ga., resident. "So it may just be genetic. My sister's kids had full heads of thick hair by the time that they were each 1, but then again, so did she."
Like skin and the other cells of our bodies, hair has a life cycle. Simplified, there is a growth period, then a resting phase before growth starts up again. Hair that has been in the resting phase falls out (if it hasn't already been shed in the meantime) when new growth starts. So if the hair your baby was born with falls out, that's a good sign that new hair is on its way in.
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