Friends, citing an old wives’ tale, said my esophageal misery suggested I would have a hairy baby. “Not ape hairy,” one friend clarified. “Just a lot of hair on its head.”

A 2006 study which appeared in the medical journal Birth seemed to corroborate this folklore, finding the hormones responsible for heartburn in pregnancy also regulate hair growth in newborns.

Yet when Oliver was born in July 2008, he had only a vague swirl of hair on his head. Not exactly the mop of hair I was expecting after crunching through economy-sized packages of Tums during my pregnancy.

We watched Oliver change before our eyes over the next year, but he remained follically challenged. It wasn’t until he turned one that Oliver began to grow some real hair – fine dirty blond hair, with a hint of strawberry, with sweet baby curls in the back.

What started out as a cute, shaggy hairdo soon became just shaggy. He would wake up most mornings with his curls snarled into a stubborn rats’ nest that no comb could untangle. Most days I was grateful for the cold weather to hide my son’s dishevelled mane under a hat.

It was finally time for Oliver’s first haircut.

The big event came the weekend he turned 19 months. We booked our appointment at Melonhead, a kids-only salon with 14 locations in Ontario as well as stores in Calgary and Vancouver. Unlike most grown-up salons, it was open on Sundays – convenient for busy parents.

Walking in the door, it was clear this place was for the kids. The walls were painted bright pink, green and orange and the front half of the salon resembled a toy store with games, puzzles, books and other treasures for sale, perhaps as a reward after braving a wash and trim.

Instead of barber’s chairs, there were trains, race cars, horses and fire trucks for youngsters to sit on during their haircuts. The stylists’ tables were filled with toys, books and other distractions to keep little hands busy while scissors were at work. A video of Dora the Explorer played on a giant flat-screen TV.

While the salon is designed to put nervous kids at ease, Oliver was having no part of his first haircutting experience. The moment I settled him into the fire truck-shaped chair – one of Oliver’s party tricks is to mimic a fire engine siren – he began to wail. I offered toy trucks and animals from the stylist’s table, but Oliver would not be soothed.

Instead, our stylist suggested I hold Oliver in my lap – in a boring adult chair – during the haircut. While his tears persisted as the stylist gently wet his hair with a spray bottle and a comb, he was soon happily distracted by a word book.

Our stylist worked quickly and with just a few snips, Oliver’s baby-fine curls were gone. In their place was a smart, little boy hairstyle. I found myself tearing up a bit as I looked at my boy. It was only a haircut, but it was reminder that Oliver was no longer a baby. Overnight, it seemed, he had become a little boy. At that moment, I wished I could make time stand still.

No stranger to emotional mothers, our stylist saved a lock of Oliver’s curls for us to take home along with a certificate marking his first haircut. She also took a picture to commemorate the moment – another milestone in a lifetime of milestones.