Red Hair

We always get people commenting on Ben's red hair.

How lovely it is, where does it come from (when they look at Steve and me), did we expect a red head?? And many other questions.

Well, I never envisaged my baby coming out with red hair. Steve and I had both been blonde as babies and then gone medium to dark brown.

When I was pregnant I wanted a little girl, always wanted a little girl, but even though we never actually found out I knew that we would have a boy. Just a feeling I had, I just knew it was going to be a boy, especially when I wanted a girl!

So at 1.30am when he was finally born, I remember Steve leaning in over my shoulder (I was kneeling on the floor at the time) and telling me it was a boy! Oh yea and that he was red!

I remember thinking to myself 'oh yea a boy, knew it would be! What do you mean he is red!'

I got over the boy bit very quickly because I think my subconscious had been preparing me for a boy for 9 months, but the red hair, I had never been prepared for that, had never even thought about it.

So there we were with a gorgeous little boy who had red hair, and yes we had to field questions about it for the next few weeks. Like

'Were you expecting him to be red?'

'Where does the red come from?'

'Were you red as a baby?'

'You're hair is red so it comes from you I see?' (mine was via a bottle!)

Actually it is very simple to explain where the red came from....

On my dad's side of the family his sister (my aunty) is red, her daughter (my cousin) is also red.

On my mum's side her brother (my uncle) is red, in fact Ben looks just like him at the same age. several of his children (he has 4, my cousins) are also red.

On Steve's side of the family, well he has red colouring in his beard and his niece (brother's daughter) is also red.

So when it comes down to it, it is really no surprise at all that we ended up with a red headed child, just that is was a totally shock because we never actually expected it!