Red Hair

You would be amazed at how often strangers stop us to comment on the color of Weston's hair. People will go into great detail about their experiences with red hair. One lady even stopped me to tell me that she had one redheaded child (the rest had black) and gave me suggestions about which styling products to use on Weston. You would also be surprised by how many jokes strangers make about Nathan being the actual father! I never realized his hair would spark so much conversation. Here are just a few of the comments we hear regularly:

• My son/daughter/mother/grandson/husband has red hair too!
• I have been trying for years to get my hair that color from a bottle.
  
• Look at that red hair!
  
• Where did he get the red hair from?
• With his red hair, he would blend in with our family .
• My personal favorite: What color hair does the mailman have?
• Does red hair run in your family?
  

The day Weston was born, his hair appeared blonde to me. The next day, we had him near the hospital window and I noticed a red tint. I remember asking Nathan, "Is his hair red?" For the rest of the day, I kept looking at his hair in different lighting. I wasn't even sure if it were possible for us to have a redheaded baby. We were confused. After bringing him home, we had determined that his hair was definitely a strawberry blonde. We just thought that his strawberry-blonde baby hair was going fall out and then turn black. We didn't know of any close relatives (except for a cousin on Nathan's side) that had red hair so there was no way Weston could have red hair. His hair did fall out, but it came back a beautiful shade of red. That's when we decided to figure out where his red hair came from.
Apparently, Nathan's great grandmother (on his dad's side) had red hair. We didn't know this until several months later. I still haven't met anyone on my side of the family that has red hair, but I found out that there are a few distant relatives that do. I just haven't met them.

After all the talk, I became curious and decided to research red hair. I found a few things on the internet that I will share with you.

• Approximately 1% to 2% of the human population has red hair.

• Red hair appears in people with two copies of a recessive gene on chromosome 16.
  

• Red hair is the rarest natural hair color in humans.

• Scotland has the highest proportion of redheads, as 13 percent of the population has red hair and approximately 40 percent carries the recessive redhead gene.

• Ireland has the second highest percentage; as many as 10 percent of the Irish population have ginger, auburn (red-brown) or strawberry blond hair.

• In the United States, anywhere from two to six percent of the population is estimated to have red hair.
  

• Even if both parents do not have red hair themselves, both can be carriers for the gene and have a redheaded child.

• Red-heads' hair maintains its natural color longer than any other hair color.

• A little known fact about natural red hair is that it never turns gray. As a person ages, their red hair will turn to a sandy-blonde color. It will then ultimately turn white.

• Adult blondes have approximately 140,000 hairs; brunettes have 110,000, and red heads only grow about 90,000 hairs on their heads.