Baby's hair color

In addition to the color of the eyes, another of the first things parents see as soon as their child is born is the baby's hair color. It is a physical aspect of the child closely related to the color of his eyes and like this one, it may change over time.

Baby's hair color It is determined solely by the genes inherited from the father and the mother. It is the genetic inheritance that defines, when conceived, whether the child will be blond, brown, brown or redhead.

As I said before, both the color and the amount and density of hair can change radically during the first months of life. It will be only about a year and a half or two years when the baby's hair acquires its final appearance.

Why does the baby's hair color change?

What happens in the baby is that there is a physiological shedding of hair. The prenatal hair with which it is born falls in the first months of life and a new one grows. Sometimes the color with which he was born is equal to that of the new hair, but in others the new hair is of another color and that is why it is said that the baby has changed the hair color. What has changed is the hair, which is another color.

The cells responsible for giving color to the hair are the melanocytes, producing melanin, which also give color to the skin and iris of the eyes. These cells are still immature in the baby and as the child grows the cells mature and give color to the hair. That is why children's hair darkens with age.

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The hair color will be defined by genetic inheritance and it depends on the presence of two types of melanin: eumelanins, responsible for dark, black, brown hair, and pheomelanins, blond and reddish hair. The combination of both results in the natural color of the hair. A higher concentration of eumelanin will give the hair a darker color while a lower concentration will give a lighter color.

When the baby's hair color changes

As we said above, the hair with which the baby is born is not definitive. It falls during the first months of life. It is sometimes falling imperceptibly and sometimes tufts, by areas, being the part that is exposed to more friction where it first falls. Around six months the final hair begins to grow, although the density and color may still vary. The speed of the change is variable, it can last months or sometimes exceed the year.

Is approximately a year and a half when the hair color will be the closest to what you will have until puberty, when a new physiological change occurs, although it will surely get darker during childhood

The baby can be born with dark hair, it falls and then is replaced by the final, blond hair. In fact, it's what happened to my baby. He was born with very little brown hair that has been falling and now, about to turn six months, a fine blond hair appears, which will be the definitive but will surely go dark with age.

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The laws of genetics and hair color

As in the case of eye color, the laws of genetics are the ones that rule. Mendel's laws, a set of rules based on the genetic transmission from parents to children, determine the color of the baby's hair from genetic inheritance.

Dark hair is dominant over light hair. That is, hair color is the result of a combination of two pairs of genes (one from each parent). For example: if dad has brown hair (dominant AA) and blond mom (recessive aa), the baby will most likely have brown hair. This assuming that both have a pure inheritance from both parents, because if there is a blond allele in the father, it is possible that the baby inherits it and has blond hair.

It is also believed that another pair of non-red / red genes determined by pheomelanin influences the baby's hair color. In this case, the non-red color is dominant and the red recessive. If the baby has two copies of the red allele it will be redheaded, a very rare combination.

The combination of these two pairs of genes results in the hair color of the human being in all its variants. That explains why there are for example blond and brown colors of such diverse shades.

As we also said in the case of eye color, genetics is unpredictable, so even if we make calculations about the color of hair that the baby will have it will not be until after six months and more likely towards the first year of life when we can know its final color, although probably later it will get dark with the years.

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