Just the other day, my husband and I shaved our baby’s head.

Depending on what kind of cultural background you come from, you’ve either found that sentence normal or absolutely odd and crazy. And, that is exactly the reason why I decided to write this post. There are so many beliefs or norms I have inherited from my culture, which sometimes can be complex and people don’t understand. And, honestly, sometimes I don’t understand it either, so I have to ask my family  information about it.

Now back to my baby. Back in the day, more than two decades ago, the Ethiopian Orthodox church required for babies to have their heads shaved off for the Baptism. Notice I specifically said the “Ethiopian Orthodox” church. Orthodox Christians are everywhere, but their church isn’t usually as strict as ours. That’s where things get confusing to me and others. I’ll dive more into my religion in other posts. It was their way of saying that the baby should be all clean and pure before God. This belief, of course, has died over time and in the U.S. the priests also tend to overlook those old conservative beliefs. When I was born in Ethiopia in the 90’s, I was shaved at 6 weeks old for the first time. Notice I said first time. I was shaved more than once. I was shaved five times to be exact. The first time for my Baptism purposes and then for another belief that I came to find out is not only practiced in Ethiopia, but also in other parts of the world.

I was shaved after that because there is a belief that if you shave your baby, that baby will grow a nicer, thicker and fuller hair. Now, there is no scientific finding to prove if this is actually true, but I can say that I am a living proof – well at least my hair is. I was told that my hair got thicker every time it got shaved and grew back. I honestly wasn’t planning on shaving Adam, especially after I was told that the church didn’t mind it anymore. Also, he was born with such beautiful hair. All that hair that gave me heartburn when I was pregnant. He got Baptized with his beautiful hair. Read more about his Baptism here.

After he turned 3 months, he started to lose his hair, but don’t worry it’s normal! Babies lose their hair and then they grow it back. I couldn’t watch his hair falling out every day, watch him go bold and risk him having such thin hair – so I took action. My husband was supportive even though it killed him seeing Adam without hair. We shaved him at home together – he did the shaving, I did the holding. It might be hard, but here’s the thing: It will grow back! Thicker and better! Also, Adam has such a cute face and still looks adorable BOLD.

Any Eastern person who saw him totally got why we shaved him and they shared the same belief. You shave your baby’s hair and it’ll grow back thicker they said. Westerners were shocked at the idea and said it sounded crazy. I guess beliefs always come from where we’re from and what we’ve seen growing up, so it’s hard to judge anybody because we all have our own way of doing things.

Check out Adam’s bold cute look boomerang below.

 

As always, I’d like to hear form you. Let me know your thoughts on this topic? Do you practice this belief in your culture?

Until next time,