Crowning Jewel

I never realized how much I'm attached to TT's hair.  Perhaps it's cause my hair has always been what I consider an unlucky trait.  I have a ton of hair, but it's all very very fine, which means I need to brush it about every 30 minutes to keep it looking kept.  Which means that I carry a brush absolutely everywhere I go.

TT on the other hand, was blessed with beautiful hair, right from the start.  She came out of the womb with thick, beautiful, black and shiny hair.

By the time I left for Ethiopia last October, her hair was starting to fall out.  I heard that happened with newborn hair, so I wasn't concerned.  Before I knew it, TT was almost a baldy, and stayed that way for about 3 or 4 months.

After a while, her hair started growing back.  It grew back even thicker than it originally was, and perhaps a little lighter in color.  If the light hit her just right, her hair would almost look auburn.

When TTs first spring came around, her hair even started curling in the back, which made me wonder if I was going to have a daughter with curly hair.  T's family all has very ethnic hair, all very wavy.  My siblings all have natural wave to their hair.  And mine?  Yuck.  It's as straight as hair can get. 

By the time we celebrated TT's birthday this past July, she had a head FULL of girls.  Beautiful, tight curls.  Oh, how in love I was with that head of hair.  Afterall, don't we always want our children to be better than ourselves.  I have bad hair. . . I was so grateful that TT has such beautiful hair.

This fall, I noticed that TT's hair appeared thinner in the front.  And then T noticed the same thing.  It was definitely thinner, but only right on top of her head.  Everywhere else, was still extremely thick.

At TT's 15 month appointment earlier this month, I decided to bring it up to the doctor.  I bring up a lot of things to TT's doctor, and he usually laughs at me (as nice as he is able) and tells me not to worry.  I thought for sure he would do the same thing when I mentioned TT losing her hair.  Instead, he actually took some concern to the fact.  He moved her hair around, and noticed that she is in fact balding on the top of her head.  He decided to do some bloodwork for us to test for diabetes as well as some autoimmune diseases that can have losing hair as a side effect.  All the bloodwork came back normal, and he also referred us to dermatology, and unfortunately we can't get in until November 15th.

Unfortunately I don't have the best picture to show the balding, but trust me, it's there.

TT seems to be feeling fine, which makes me wonder if I'm really just concerned because I'm vain? I think it's more than that though.  Her hair is falling out.  That can't be normal, can it?

Her doctor did mention that if she only lost her baby hair on the sides that this could be her losing her baby hair on the top.

Some other theories I have are:

• When TT's hair started getting longer, we were constantly putting rubber bands on the top of her head to keep her hair manageable.  Perhaps her hair was just too fine to handle the stress of that rubberband?

• TT is constantly playing with her hair, and at times, even tugging and pulling at it.  Could TT be pulling out her own hair?  And why would she do that?
• Perhaps TT has a hair loss disorder such as Alopecia.  (Oh God. . . don't let this be serious!)

For now, I try to rock a bit of a comb-over on TT.  (She has so much hair everywhere else on her head, that this usually works) I've been using bows and ribbons to hide it, and I've been trying to keep hats on her head so she isn't always pulling at her hair.  And really, all we can do is wait until November 15th, and hope we get some answers.

If anyone has any advice or suggestions or anything, I am all ears.