The battle is real! It is one of those things everyone says happens but you don’t fully appreciate it until it happens to you, at least I didn’t. I have always had lots of hair, naturally thick and curly (and always wanted sleeker straight hair, isn’t that always the way), so when the post pregnancy hair loss warning came I didn’t really give it much thought. Then at around 4 months after baby E made his grand entrance my hair started making its limp exit.
It was more extreme than I expected. When I washed or brushed my hair it just came out by the handful, my scalp was also quite tender and I spent many a night complaining of ‘sore hair’ to Mr W (that is a thing, right?). I was so taken aback by the amount of hair that would come out during and after washing it that I had to show my parents when we visited them. To which my dad helpfully responded ‘Christ, is that normal?’ well yes dad, yes it is.
So over the next two months my hair continued its great escape and I started sporting the fetching look of two triangles, sparsely populated with hair by my temples. I also became obsessed with checking Baby E for little cheese wire-like devil hairs that may have sneaked onto him. My house took a good hit too, my hoover and shower plug groaned as they became engorged with the tangle of hair and my floors turned into the Wild West with a tumbleweed of hair balls.
While the only thing that is guaranteed to stop your hair falling is the floor, there are a few things I did to help take care of it while it worked its way through this difficult phase.
I started taking an iron supplement each day. This may have helped, it may not but what it did do is give me the feeling that I was doing something to try and help. Stress can contribute to hair loss and even though I repeatedly said to everyone ‘it’s completely normal’, the hardest person I had to convince was myself. Taking an iron supplement each day made me feel a little more in control and feeling like I was doing something positive to help.
I invested in a Tangle Teaser hairbrush. This does seem more gentler than dragging my normal brush through my hair and while the hair obviously still came out it was less than the usual handfuls that had been making their new home on my old brush.
I made a conscious effort to be kinder to my hair. I didn’t tie it back so tightly and took more care when washing, brushing and straightening it and tried to give it a good break between washes. I also tried to nourish it, my long term favourite leave in conditioner is Vitapoint, an oldie but a goodie in my opinion.
Now at just over 7 months since giving birth my hair loss has slowed considerably, so I can now more convincingly say it is completely normal and it will stop! However, when those lovely locks do decide to take up residence in their custom made follicles it appears they decide to revert back to little wisps with a mind of their own…a whole new battle.
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