My Hair

When I say that I will post more often, I do not mean every day. I promise you I don't' have that kind of time. But it is the weekend and Rick is home, so I do have a little more time than usual. So I thought I would tell you all the story of my hair.

I knew, long before I became pregnant that during pregnancy most women get increasingly thick hair. The hormones of pregnancy keep our hair in the active growing phase whereas normally about 30% of our hair is in the resting phase (falling out). See hair has a nice little cycle. Each month just enough hair falls out to ensure that we don't notice the loss (from a viewing perspective, we might notice the shedding on our clothes or our hairbrush) but also to ensure that we always have a mane of shiny, healthy hair. Pregnancy hormones screw with that cycle. It keeps over 90% of your hair in the active growing stage (in most women). Which is lovely during pregnancy when you have this lush, thick, shiny head of hair. Depending on the woman, and your hormone level, it can get out of control. Mine did. I have normally thick hair to begin with and by the end of my pregnancy it got ridiculous. It looked great when I wore it down. For the maternity photo's I posted a few months ago, I had it cut and styled and I thought it looked really nice. The hairdresser could not believe how much hair I had. I could not get an elastic around it to put it up, there was too much of it. If I wanted it out of my face, I had to put a bandanna around it.

The I delivered and my hormone levels crashed. Apparently they crashed harder because I had the C-section and breastfed for a few weeks and then abruptly gave it up. About 2 months post partum, my hair started falling out.

At first I wasn't at all concerned. Everything you read about pregnancy tells you to expect some shedding after birth. But the rate at which my hair came out was scary. If I laid on the floor on a blanket to play with my little boy, when I got up, the floor was covered in hair. And I mean covered! And you could see it, because we don't have any carpet. When I showered it was brutal. Handfuls and handfuls of hair would come out. It would clog the drain. So I started putting it on the edge of the tub to put in the garbage. People, these piles of hair would be the size of .... well I can't explain it properly... have a look.

And I wasn't just losing it in the shower. I was losing it all day, every day, everywhere. I have two cats who play and create fur balls that blow around my hard floors. But each day when I swept I would get far more of my hair than theirs.

I would wake up in the morning to hair covering my pillow.

I started to see bald spots. Little ones at first at my temples and above my ears. Then they got bigger and bigger and bigger. And I started to have the male pattern baldness look at the back of my head. I dreaded going into the shower. Even if I didn't shampoo my hair the hair loss was traumatizing.

I went to the doctor. At that point I had lost about 50% of the volume of my hair. I thought for sure it had something to do with the brain surgery. She said it might. That when your body goes through so much trauma it prioritizes recovery and all non-essential processes (such as hair and nail growth and ovulation) gets stopped. But mostly she thought it was hormonally caused as a result of birth. She told me it was an extreme case obviously, but something she had seen several times before. She also told me that my blood work came back and I was anemic (not surprising since I had narrowly avoided a blood transfusion during my brain surgery, just 9 days after my C-section).

At it's worse point, I figure I lost approximately 75% of my hairs volume. Although I had obvious bald spots, the worse part at this point was that the little hair that was left was dry and brittle and just dead looking. It got to the point that a clip that I would use to hold up a little hair around the edges before I got pregnant could hold all of my hair and then some. I didn't take many pictures at that stage but I saw this one the other day where you could kind of see a little of how very thin and brittle or frizzy it got at the top.

I finally had enough. With everything I had been through I didn't really need to feel bad about myself because of stupid hair. And although I don't consider myself a vain person, a hair is pretty important to a girl, don't you think. It had gotten to the point where I was no longer taking pictures of me and my son together and that was the final straw. I had waited so long for him and I was going to enjoy every minute of it damn it! So I went to a salon that supplied wigs to women going through illnesses that causes hair loss. It was very discreet and private and helpful. I chose a wig that even my family thought looked exactly like my real hair. In fact when I wore it, my extended family didn't even know. And then 2 weeks after paying $500 for this lovely wig, my hair started to grow back. At first it just looked like 5 o'clock shadow. You couldn't really see hair, but you couldn't see shiny bald either. And then gradually the hair grew and now it is about 2-3 inches long.

As soon as the head wasn't shiny bald anymore I stopped wearing the wig. The salon had told me that once the hair grows it needs the air and covering it would inhibit the growth. So I cut my hair all to one length (chin length) and although it was still very thin, it looked much healthier and you couldn't see bald spots.

When the hair started to get like stubble it actually looked quite nice. The other hair would cover it but the stubble gave it a lift and made it looker fuller. Now, however, the new hair is about 2-3 inches and sticks out all over my head. There is no styling it, it goes where it wants.

I am not too concerned about it though. At this point people can think it is normal pregnancy loss. I have post partum fringe. And I laugh about how funny it looks. I can do that now because I know that it is coming back, and that is all that is important.