To shave my baby's head?

[Fedupofplaystation]

Dd is 10 weeks old and has lots of feathery hair. People are always commenting "how lovely, she has so much hair."

Last week we had to go to A&E to have a hair tourniquet removed and I'm worried she's going to get another one. She keeps rubbing the hair off her head and I'm constantly pulling it off her little fingers and toes.

The hair also keeps getting fluff caught in it, not to mention the sick.

You mean she wound some hair so tightly around a finger you had to go to A and E to have it removed?

What's a hair tourniquet?

Why don't you just trim it with scissors as opposed to shaving it?

Trim it shorter?

Put a cotton hat on her head.

What the frick is a hair tourniquet

Hair_tourniquet Good God I've never heard of it. That must have been very distressing. I think you need to cut her hair.

I think a hair tourniquet is when the hair gets tightly wound round a finger restricting blood flow.

Hair tourniquet syndrome is a rare clinical phenomenon that involves hair, thread, or similar material becoming so tightly wrapped around an appendage that it results in pain, injury, and, sometimes, loss of the appendage.[1] Essentially, any appendage may be involved, including a toe, wrist, penis, scrotum, tongue, vaginal labium, ear lobe, umbilicus, or nipple.[2, 3, 4, 5] In a review of 210 cases of hair-thread tourniquet syndrome, 44% involved the penis, 40% the toes, 8.7% fingers, and another 6.8% represented other sites, including external female genitalia and the uvula.[6]

emedicine.medscape.com/article/1348969-overview

I'd never heard of this before

My dd had that. I was able to remove it but I think it was my hair not hers.

Anyway since then and for other reasons too she's been wearing a lot of sleep suits with the turnover mitts on the hands. I had been given a couple of multipacks from Jl for xmas. They're not great quality but nice designs. That might be worth a try.

I would cut her hair, although I can't imagine it being common.

When DS2 was around 18 months he was really unsettled on a day out crying, wouldn't eat or drink, refusing to walk. I bought some paracetamol thinking he was ill. When we got onto the beach I took off his sandals to notice his pinky toe was sticking out the side. Poor soul he was happy after that

Hair shaving really isn't that big a deal, all of mine were shaved on 7th day for religious/cultural reasons. If she has loads you may not feel confident to do it yourself so take her to the hairdresser.

I definately would not want to risk the tourniquet happening again, so I personally would do it.

You could totally do that - in some cultures it's traditional to shave a baby's head.

Yes, hair tourniquet is as described above.
I was unable to remove it myself and the doctor had to cut her skin to get it off as it was so embedded.
He said that once a baby has had one hair tourniquet, they're more likely to have it happen again.
I would be more worried going near her wriggly head with scissors than the shaver, I think.
If I did shave it, would her actual hair grow as normal, or would she end up as a toddler with unusually short hair?

Could you not just put mittens on her?

Or a hat?

Fedupof, it's very common for Asian babies to have their heads shaved and I was advised by several mums in the queue to see the HV that I should get DD done as it would make her hair grow back 'lovely and thick' - hah, not with DH's and my rubbishy fine hair in the gene pool! - so I wouldn't worry about it not growing back.

I almost wish I'd done it, just to see, as DD is nearly 10 and still has fine, flat, wispy hair, despite it being down to the small of her back .

No truth at all to the idea that cutting or shaving hair makes it grow thicker--this myth has been exploded many, many times!

But nothing wrong with shaving hair if you want to.

If she gets another hair tourniquet, use Nair. That's what I did!

Friend's baby was born in Singapore. Apparently they shave babies' hair off routinely, say it helps the hair grow back thicker? She didn't do it to her baby but loved being taught how to swaddle, swore by that.

When my DD1 was around 12 weeks all her hair from birth began to fall out, and then slowly started growing again. She had a natural mohawk for ages. So if it happens naturally I don't see why shaving it would affect the hair growth.

And YY to the cutting hair making it thicker myth. Its bullshit.

YANBU. I'd forgotten all about the hair tourniquet that DS had when he was about 3m old - it was really scary. He had one of my hairs wrapped round one of his toes, and it was wound so tightly around that his toe was bleeding. We managed to free it eventually, but I felt so awful especially as it took me ages to work out why he was crying so much . It healed very fast though and he never had another one.

I had both of my dc hair shaved when they were a few months old and it did grow back thicker with more even coverage. If you don't want to shave it then trim it very close to the head but there is nothing wrong with shaving the baby's head. I was practically bald before the age of 2 as my mum kept shaving my hair and it didn't do me any harm.

I definately wouldn't use Nair or any other depilatory creams on a babies head.

After shaving hair grows back normally. It may appear to look thicker, but it isn't.

I wouldn't worry about having a short haired toddler if you do shave - think about all those babies who're just naturally bald! DD2's baby hair all fell out at about 5 months and then from there it just grew and grew and grew... at 18 months you could hardly see her for the massive mop she'd grown (DH calls her the angry mop even now )

DS2 had a few of these on his fingers, though I did not know there was a technical term for them. I found one of these seamrippers ideal for detaching them.

The hair looks thicker when it comes back because it's flat ended rather than tapered on the end which makes it look wispy.