Newborn hair is very delicate and changeable, that’s why we have this super guide for you.
Between the 14th and 16th weeks of pregnancy, your baby begins to grow very fine hair on the skin, more abundantly on the head and eyebrows, and at week 20 his body completely covers himself with it.
This velvety hair cap is known as lanugo and it causes a fat coating to accumulate on the child’s skin, which is still very thin and without subcutaneous fat, exerting an insulating and protective function that prevents it from being softened by the continuous contact with amniotic fluid.
From the eighth month of gestation, the lanugo begins to fall and lodges in the amniotic fluid. As the baby swallows it, the lanugo becomes part of the meconium, the first stool that the baby will make outside of his mother’s body and that starts his intestines. Lanugo, therefore, also favors the intestinal function of the child.
There are areas from which lanugo takes longer to detach, such as the shoulders, back, ears and head. For this reason, there are babies who still have hairy remains at birth in these areas.
If your little one is one of them, don’t be alarmed !, because this hair is rootless and will fall out in the following weeks with the daily rubbing of clothes and sheets. And it is that outside the womb she no longer needs it. After birth, it is you who will feed the baby so that it has the necessary nutrients and who will clothe it and take care of the dangers.
He’s bald!
As you can guess, if your little one loses his hair and stays a little bald, you should not worry at all, because it does not denote that he lacks vitamins nor is it a symptom of any disease: what happens is that this hair does not it was hair, but lanugo, and he must lose it so that his hair “really” grows out.
You just need to have a little patience, because in this case and in children born without hair, the “problem” of baldness resolves spontaneously in a matter of a few months.
It should not surprise you if a round bald spot still appears on the back of the head, just above the nape, because it is not due to any skin condition. His appearance is explained because he spends many hours a day lying down and the almost continuous friction with the crib sheets accelerates the lanugo’s fall in this area.