When you have a baby, you’ll hear it all. Sleepless nights are well documented. Family, friends and even random women in the street will be rushing to tell you about the needle-in-the-eye level of exhaustion that will leave you howling at the moon come ten o clock. We all know about nine months on and nine months off. Don’t dare try on your size 8 pre pregnancy jeans if you want to hold onto an inch of your soul . What no one mentions is the sudden clumps of hair coming out in the shower. Losing your hair is never easy.
Most women achieve all their hair goals during pregnancy. They might feel like shit but hey, their hair looks great while hanging over the toilet seat. The problem is is that those Goddess locks are not your own- they’re actually borrowed from your future self. So your voluminous pregnancy locks will end up falling out all at once about three months post Partum, and you will end up looking like an extra in Lord of the Rings. Its known as Postpartum hair loss, or ‘Telogen ‘Effluvium’ if you want to sound posh.
It didn’t happen to me the first time. But I wasn’t so lucky this time round. It started out as stray hairs in the shower- but nothing incriminating. Now, it’s a different story. At first, I was under a false sense of security. I couldn’t see where the hairs were coming from. Being naturally thick, my hair had some protective barrier from looking sparse too quickly. But then my scalp started to get sore. I tied my hair back and when I took the scrunchy out, half my hair came out with it. My hair line was receding at the sides. My parting was no longer straight but instead zig zaggy from missing hairs.
I tried prenatal vitamins, biotin, sea marine collagen- what have you. But I could never remember to take the bloody stuff. I ended up buying hair gummy bears because I’m a child, and this was the only way I would remember to take anything. Well the gummy bears disappeared suspiciously quickly. My hair still shed. I definitely wasn’t the only one enjoying the gummy bears.
Alongside supplements, I used all sorts of hair growth shampoos. I tried deep conditioning, scalp massaging , all natural tree-hugging products. All I was left with was greasy hair and a lighter bank account. Nothing so far has worked. It’s been hard to accept that hair loss is another shit reality that I have to face this year, but it’s common, temporary (so I’m told) and the lesser of other shits.
Now my hair is getting thinner, I realise how blessed I am to have naturally thick hair. But I will not give in to it. I will not get a mum cut- I’m 27 years old, and I will not start wearing head attire meant for little girls either. I will stand up to telogen ef- whatever it’s called, tell it where to go and stick to being me. Having a baby, being it’s power source (breastfeeding) is hard enough. My body is still not entirely my own and I cannot give into another shit storm that motherhood and mother nature has decided to throw at me.
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