My husband wanted to shave our baby’s head, but I wasn’t ready to lose his blonde curls.

In some Persian families, shaving a baby boy’s head is a normal tradition. But when H suggested taking the clippers to our son’s blonde curls, I decided this was one custom too far.

Nine months of curls and one very confident husband

There are things you become attached to as a new mum. The first tiny babygrow, the hospital wristband and, in my case, Cyrus’s head full of blonde curls that had taken nine months to grow. Cyrus had the sort of hair people felt compelled to comment on. Soft, golden and a bit unruly, his curls had survived milk and the occasional attempt to rub ghormeh sabzi into his scalp. I liked them, even when they were sticking up in every direction thanks to a double crown.

H, however, thought it was time for a haircut. Being a practical Persian father, he saw no reason to involve a professional when he could do the job himself. “It’s only hair. I can do it,” he announced, with the confidence that always makes me nervous. I looked at him, then at Cyrus, and wondered whether my husband had temporarily forgotten how much a nine-month-old likes to move his head.

I understood the family tradition, but I wasn’t convinced our baby’s first haircut needed to involve a pair of clippers and our kitchen floor.

The Persian tradition that nearly cost Cyrus his curls

In some Persian families, shaving a baby boy’s head during his first year is a tradition, associated with renewal and the belief that it encourages healthy new growth. Traditions vary between families, but H was comfortable with the idea of a closely cropped little boy. I wasn’t so enthusiastic. Cyrus was our little pesar tala, our golden boy, and those blonde curls had become something of a family trademark.

Marrying into a Persian family had introduced me to customs I might otherwise never have encountered, from Nowruz celebrations to the importance of feeding guests until they could barely move. Some I embraced enthusiastically, while others took a little discussion. Taking a pair of clippers to our baby’s head fell firmly into the second category. I understood that the tradition mattered, but I couldn’t see why our son needed to lose every curl.

I could already picture H standing in the kitchen, Cyrus wriggling on someone’s knee and me hovering nearby. My imagination supplied a rather unfortunate bowl haircut, the sort that appeared in school photographs throughout the 1970s. Perhaps H would have done a respectable job. He is an engineer, after all, and hardly unfamiliar with precision. But cutting a baby’s hair takes a different sort of expertise, especially when the customer has no intention of sitting still.

We eventually reached a compromise. Cyrus could have his hair cut, but the curls were staying. There would be no kitchen barbering, no experimental use of clippers and definitely no shaving his head. I suspect H thought I was making a lot of fuss over a few strands of hair, but he agreed that a professional hairdresser might be the more sensible option.

H could have his tidy little boy, but I was keeping those blonde curls.

Why we chose Pikku Hair Salon in Gosforth

A friend had recommended Pikku Hair Salon on Gosforth High Street in Newcastle, a children’s hairdresser that was better equipped for a baby’s first trim than our kitchen. I booked online, taking more interest in the choice of stylist than I usually do when arranging my own haircut. Mine can generally be rescued with a hairbrush, but Cyrus’s first haircut felt rather more important.

When we arrived, I could see why parents liked the place. Instead of the usual salon chairs, there were colourful little cars designed for children to sit in while having their hair cut. Each had an iPad positioned to keep its young passenger entertained, which struck me as a sensible investment in parental sanity. Cyrus was taken with the blue car. Persian blue, naturally, although I suspect he was more interested in the steering wheel than its cultural significance.

Disney’s Cars appeared on the screen, and suddenly the prospect of having a stranger approach his head with scissors seemed less interesting than Lightning McQueen. I began to relax, although I still kept a close eye on proceedings. This was the first time anyone had taken scissors to those curls, and I wasn’t about to miss a moment of it.

One baby and a patient hairdresser

Our stylist, Zoe, clearly knew how to handle small customers. She worked calmly, introducing the spray bottle and scissors without making a great production of either. Cyrus sat in his little car wearing a plastic cape, watching the screen while Zoe began trimming his hair. There was no protest, or an attempt to escape and, much to my relief, no need for me to hold him down while apologising to everyone within earshot.

I watched the first blonde curl fall and felt an unexpected pang of sadness. I’d spent months brushing those curls away from his forehead, occasionally wondering whether he could actually see through them. Now that someone was cutting them off, I found myself wanting to pick up every last one. It was faintly ridiculous, of course. Hair grows back, as H had already pointed out, but I wasn’t interested in being reasonable about it.

Zoe worked carefully around his head, taking enough off to tidy things up without removing the curls altogether. Cyrus barely seemed to notice, while I paid far more attention to the scissors than to the film. There was something reassuring about watching someone who understood that cutting a baby’s hair was as much about keeping the child comfortable as achieving a neat result.

By the time Zoe finished, Cyrus looked wonderfully smart. His hair still had its familiar wave, but his face seemed more visible and his expression a little cheekier. I couldn’t quite explain why a haircut made him appear older, but it did. He was still my baby, naturally, although I could already see the little boy he was becoming.

A Persian-British discovery

One of the interesting things about raising a child in a British-Persian household is discovering which traditions become part of family life and which ones acquire a different interpretation. Our son would grow up knowing both sides of his heritage, with Persian celebrations, family food, language and customs alongside the familiar routines of growing up in Newcastle. But that didn’t mean every tradition had to be followed exactly as previous generations had practised it.

For H, shaving a baby’s head was hardly something to get worked up about. For me, preserving those curls mattered, even if I couldn’t offer a convincing explanation beyond the fact that I loved them. Neither of us was being unreasonable, although I naturally considered my position the more persuasive one. Parenthood involves enough negotiations over feeding, sleeping and who gets up during the night without adding a disagreement about the family hairdressing arrangements.

In the end, Cyrus had a proper haircut without losing the look we’d grown so fond of. H got a tidier son, I kept the curls and nobody had to clean blonde hair off the kitchen floor. Raising a child between two cultures doesn’t always take grand decisions about identity or tradition. Sometimes it comes down to whether a nine-month-old should have his head shaved or have his fringe trimmed.

A green balloon, a certificate and two bags of baby curls

The finishing touches were almost as memorable as the haircut itself. Cyrus received a green balloon, bubbles and a certificate marking his first haircut. We were also given two little bags containing some of his blonde locks, which delighted me far more than I would ever have expected. Before becoming a mother, I might have wondered why anyone would want to keep a small collection of someone else’s hair. Now I was pleased to have it carefully packaged for the baby album.

The whole experience cost £13.50, which seemed reasonable for a haircut, a keepsake and the reassurance that my son wouldn’t be leaving the salon looking as though he’d had an argument with a lawnmower. Cyrus was perfectly happy with his balloon and appeared entirely unconcerned about the significance of the occasion. He had no idea that his mother was mentally filing away another little milestone, ready to become sentimental about it later.

I took one last look at his freshly trimmed hair and decided we’d made the right choice. The curls were still there, just a little shorter and considerably tidier. H seemed satisfied, Cyrus had enjoyed his outing and I had managed to get through the experience without making an embarrassing fuss in front of the hairdresser. All things considered, it was a successful family expedition.

Baby’s first haircut at Pikku

Why a baby’s first haircut feels like such a big deal

Before Cyrus arrived, I never imagined I’d have strong opinions about a baby’s haircut. I certainly didn’t expect to spend time negotiating the length of his fringe with my husband. Yet becoming a mother at 40 had made me rather conscious of how quickly these early years were passing. Perhaps it was because I’d waited longer than many women to have a child, or perhaps every parent feels the same way when another first disappears into the family photo album.

You spend the early months waiting for things to happen. The first smile, the first tooth, the first proper attempt at crawling. Then they happen, and almost immediately you’re looking back at photographs wondering where that tiny baby went. I had spent so much time concentrating on each new stage of Cyrus’s development that I hadn’t quite appreciated how quickly one would give way to the next.

A haircut is hardly a major event in the grand scheme of parenting. There would be much bigger decisions ahead, and I suspected H and I would have plenty more discussions about how to balance our different backgrounds. But this was one of those small occasions that mattered precisely because it couldn’t be repeated. Cyrus would have plenty of haircuts in his lifetime, but only one first haircut.

He left Pikku looking smart, happy and still unmistakably our curly-haired boy. H was satisfied, and I had two little bags of hair to add to a growing collection of things I couldn’t quite bring myself to throw away. The curls would grow again, and I knew that eventually there would come a day when Cyrus would have his own opinions about how he wanted his hair cut.

Did you keep your baby’s first curls?

Did you keep your baby’s first curls, or were you perfectly happy to see them swept away? And if you’re raising children across two cultures, have you ever found yourself negotiating which family traditions to follow? I’d love to hear how you handled that first haircut, particularly if someone in your household was a little too enthusiastic about the clippers.

More from Saffron & Cyrus

Occasional stories, experiments, discoveries and questions from Saffron & Cyrus.