"Birth Hair"??? This is kind of confusing.

Hey all,

I'm not sure how to lead into this, so I'll just go! Now, I'm a pretty white guy. I'm pretty pale, I have blue eyes, and my hair is light brown. According to my parents, though, I was born with thick black hair. This hair, they say, started to fall out in clumps, I was bald for a while, and then my hair grew back in the color it is now. I'm not sure of the time span, but I know that it was while I was still a baby. Has anybody heard of this? Is it some common thing in babies that I just never learned?

As a kid I had very very light blond hair but it gradually changed as I got older into a medium brown colour but its fairly common for it to happen.

I've not heard of hair actually falling out and then regrowing as a different colour, I did think of a fact I heard from the television show QI in which babies actually grow hair in the womb then eat it.

Found a link which describes it:

Why we are not naked even in the womb

What most of us don’t know is that, not only are we not entirely hairless as adults, we are not even naked in the womb. About four months into a normal nine-month pregnancy, when the fetus is about 5.3 inches (135 mm) long and weighs about 6 ounces (170 g), it grows a moustache! Fine hair forms on the upper lip. Gradually, over the next month or so, this fine hair spreads to eventually cover the entire body! The unborn baby remains completely hairy for many weeks.

This soft, hairy coat is called lanugo. The word is from the Latin lan and means “wooly down”. This hair suit is shed before or soon after birth. Each hair of the lanugo is shed one by one and is then swallowed by the baby. The tiny hairs join mucus, bile, and other products to form a black substance called meconium. Just after birth, this meconium is excreted by the newborn in its first bowel movement. One must admit that this is a rather interesting way of ridding ourselves of our first unwanted clothes!

I highly doubt that is it though, just thought I'd share a strange fact.


[edit on 5-3-2007 by UK Wizard]

Whoa...there goes my breakfast! That is very strange, but I agree with you that it's probably not what it was. This hair was thick, black, and only on my head. I've heard of babies being born with different colored hair, but never the hair actually falling out in clumps as my parents explained it.

I read about people who had cancer, went through chemotherapy, lost all their hair to have it grow back a different color. I don't know if there's any relation at all, but yeah, another hair color changing phenomenon!

Originally posted by Paresthesia
I read about people who had cancer, went through chemotherapy, lost all their hair to have it grow back a different color. I don't know if there's any relation at all, but yeah, another hair color changing phenomenon!

Maybe I'm the first person to beat cancer as a newborn!

kinda kreepy kinda kew

My newborn is losing his hair. Is this normal?

Newborn hair loss is perfectly normal and nothing to worry about. Babies often lose their hair during the first six months. This kind of hair loss is called telogen effluvium.

Mystery solved

Originally posted by UK Wizard

My newborn is losing his hair. Is this normal?

Newborn hair loss is perfectly normal and nothing to worry about. Babies often lose their hair during the first six months. This kind of hair loss is called telogen effluvium.

Mystery solved

Ah, thanks UK! I've been wanting to know why that happened for years now. I can rest in peace.