Pregnant Mothers with Heartburn Can Expect Babies with Lots of Hair

New Study Shows Old Wives' Tale to Be True

There are many wives tales associated with pregnancy. Most of these deal with gender-prediction and include such clues as the baby's heartrate, whether the mother is carrying the baby high or low, where the mother is carrying extra weight. One wives' tale deals with how much hair your baby will have: If you struggle with heartburn during pregnancy, your baby will have a lot of hair. This belief, like many others, has been chalked up to myth although some mothers swear it is true.

It turns out that these mothers may be right after all. Researchers at Johns Hopkins have released a study in the journal Birth showing that a correlation between heartburn and the hairiness of a newborn actually exists.

The research was conducted by Kathleen Costigan, a registered nurse in the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics at John Hopkins, and colleagues. The study followed 64 women throughout pregnancy. These women were asked to rank the severity of their heartburn symptoms. When their babies were born, two independent observers rated the thickness of the newborn hair using photographs taken after birth.

Seventy-eight percent of the pregnant women reported some level of heartburn, and were able to participate in the study. Of the 28 women who reported moderate to severe heartburn during pregnancy, 82% gave birth to babies with above average hair thickness. Of the 12 women who reported no heartburn symptoms at all, 83% gave birth to babies with very little or no hair.

Costigan writes "Contrary to expectations, it appears that an association between heartburn severity during pregnancy and newborn hair does exist." She adds, "We've heard this claim hundreds of times, and I've always told people it's nonsense. Since the study came out, I've had to eat a lot of crow."

While investigating this myth, I personally ran across a number of websites that are going to have to do the same.