So we were driving in the car a month ago when my 3 year old daughter asks me if she is a boy. "Do you want to be a boy?" I ask her not cueing in right away. "My head looks like a boy," she says. Ah ha. People often confuse her for a boy as her hair is short, she doesn't like bows, and because she hates getting her hair cut except by me, and the best I could do turned out to be a boyish cut. I haven't had to cut it in months as it is not growing very fast now, despite the flax seed oil I give her religiously. It was just starting to come in nicely, we had just celebrated our first pony tails, when I noticed the spot. I found it curious, went online, and before any doctor saw her, I knew. On top of all the preemie stuff, on top of everything else we've been through and all the mountains we've climed and have yet to climb, on top of all of that, my daughter was losing her hair to a condition that offered no clear path, no treatment, and no guarantees.

Her next comment about it was a few weeks later while brushing her teeth at the sink. She told me that dots were falling out of hair. "Yes," I said, "they are. Sometimes that happens. It is ok." She plays with her pony tail holder but I don't make her a pony tail. I'm scared of pulling more hair out. I would if she asked me to, but she doesn't ask.