While births can certainly be unpredictable, most of them turn out in the same general way so we’re usually not too far off when we imagine what a newborn baby is going to look like.
But of course, that’s not always the case and while rare conditions can sometimes develop later in life, doctors and parents can usually tell that a baby has a rare difference as soon as they’re born.
Considering how extreme and debilitating these congenital conditions can sometimes be, it’s understandable that parents might initially take on an alarmist attitude when this happens. But as we’ll see in the case of one child with some unique hair, we can often see that the differences are more cosmetic than anything.
And in his case, it’s led to a look that suits him very well.
When one-year-old Locklan Samples was born, his hair was jet black and looked similar to that of his mother, Katelyn.
And while it’s more common than you might expect for a child’s hair to suddenly turn blond as they start to grow, something much rarer started happening to Samples’ hair by the time he turned 6 months old.
As they told People , his parents noticed he had grown some unusually soft “peach fuzz” on his head and the more it grew, the more it stood out.
By the time he was nine months old, Samples’ hair started to stand up as we see here and a commenter on Instagram suggested that might be the result of an extremely rare condition called uncombable hair syndrome.
As Katelyn put it, “I was like, oh my god, what is this? Is something wrong with my baby? I went into tailspins on Google.”
But what she would soon learn was that it was hard to get much information about this condition because Samples is one of only 100 people ever known to experience it.
After checking with her family’s pediatrician, Katelyn was referred to a specialist in Atlanta’s Emory Hospital, who had only seen one other case in 19 years of practicing medicine.
Fortunately, once this was confirmed to be the reason for Samples’ soft, fragile hair, his family eventually discovered they didn’t have much to worry about.
This is because every other aspect of his body and overall health has been developing normally, so it seems that only his hair is affected.
And while Katelyn hasn’t found much available information about uncombable hair syndrome, she has found a Facebook group in which other parents have shown how these cases develop as children get older.
Sometimes the condition remains about as noticeable as when it first appears and sometimes it lessens as a child grows.
But regardless of what happens in Samples’ case, his family is deciding to let his hair remain as undisturbed as possible.
As Katelyn said, “I hardly have to wash it, unless he’s literally playing in the dirt, because it doesn’t get greasy. It’s incredibly soft, and people want to touch it all the time. I hardly brush it, because it’s very fragile. I just try to be very gentle with it and not mess with it unless I have to.”
She also said that while she’s preparing to teach him to love his hair when the inevitable questions come up, most of the response he’s received have been positive and he’s often called a little rock star.
As Katelyn added, “And right now when he’s little, he loves the attention and doesn’t mind it.”
h/t: People
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