Parents often speculate about what their baby will look like, from the color of their eyes to the shape of their noses.
When you’re pregnant, it’s fun to speculate about your future baby’s appearance. What will their hair look like? Will they have blue eyes or brown eyes? But while parents can’t help but make predictions, they can never be 100% sure until after the baby actually arrives.
However, parents in Bangladesh do have some understanding about why their baby boy develops strange features.
When doctors delivered Bayezid Hossain, a baby boy who resembled a little 80-year-old man more than a newborn, they were rather taken aback.
“The baby does not look like a newborn at all,” said one of the doctors treating him. “There are prominent sings of aging such a excessive wrinkles and rough skin texture.”
But while their son may look wildly different than your typical “bouncing baby boy,” his loving parents are overjoyed by his arrival. And just as they should be!
“We can only thank God,” his father said. “There is no need to be unhappy about the appearance of my son.”
The baby boy’s fast aging is thought to be caused by progeria, a rare disease that affects only one in four million people.
A single error in a gene, which leads it to produce an aberrant protein called progerin, is the origin of the hereditary condition. This protein ages child with progeria faster– which ages the body at eight times the normal rate because it breaks down more readily and accumulates in many of their cells.
According to a Dailymail story, Bayezid Hossain, who hails from the southern Bangladeshi city of Magura, has a bloated face, hollow eyes, sagging skin, hurting joints, trouble urinating, and already weak and damaged teeth.
Even though he is more intelligence than the typical person, the community avoids him, and kids are reluctant to play with him.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a Brad Pitt film and F Scott Fitzgerald book in which the main character is born an elderly man and ages backward, is thought to have been inspired by the disease.
Patients with progeria typically pass away at an average age of 13 from heart attacks or strokes.
In addition, Bayezid has an uncommon connective tissue ailment called cutis laxa, which causes the skin to hang loosely in folds.
Despite being in awe of how intelligent her son is, Tripti Khatun says it aches her heart that he has such an uncommon appearance
She said: ‘Bayezid only learned to walk aged three but he had a full set of teeth at three months old.
‘His physical growth is completely abnormal but mentally, he has wonderful conversation, very aware and is very intuitive for his age.
‘He does not look like other children. He looks like an old man. As a first time mother I can’t bear the pain of seeing my child like this.’
Explaining the devastation that followed her son’s birth, the mother said ‘I was terrified to see him when he was born. He was just flesh and bones. He looked like an alien and it was heartbreaking for me.
‘Doctors had no idea what to do, they said they had never seen such a baby. They warned us that there was nothing they could do.’
As Bayezid grew older both his personality and body developed much faster than other children in his village.
Tripti added: ‘He’s very stubborn and knows what he wants, and he gets very impatient. But he’s playful, his mind is very sharp, and he’s full of conversation.’
As time has passed his neighbors have slowly gotten used to his presence and have now fondly tagged him the ‘old man’
Bayezid doesn’t attend school, but he enjoys drawing on paper, playing with his ball, and even breaking his toys so he can fix them again.
Like the stars in the galaxy, it is indeed that every child is special. Each child is unique. Every child has its own capabilities and some have their challenges and difficulties, and for Bayezid, despite what his condition is, he’s always been a great inspiration.
Watch it here: Youtube/Truly
Sources: Awm, Dailyasianage, Ladbible