Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow?

Proving once again that every woman and each individual pregnancy is different, I thought I would write about my hair. Apparently the higher estrogen levels during pregnancy prolong the growth phase of your hair. This means that it grows faster and it stays on your head longer translating to what looks like longer and thicker hair. Prenatal vitamins also add to this boost just by the fact that you're getting more nutrients.

My hair however, hasn't really changed much. Or if it has, it's hard to tell because of two key factors. 1) Timing was such that before I found out that I was pregnant I had decided to give my hair a rest and "go natural" just to see what it was looking like these days. I often have my hair permanently straightened or permed into a wave because I can't stand my natural frizzy, thick mix of 1/3 straight, 1/3 curly, 1/3 wavy hair. The verdict? Still a 3-follicle type mess. Which is why 2) because I had decided to go natural, I had my hair layered and thinned out to make the frizz and hair thickness easier to handle.

I guess my hair has grown thicker? Hard to say. I've always had thick hair and I've always had a lot of it fall out without anyone being the wiser. Every time we vacuum, CGB often jokes that the cats and I must have a contest to see who can shed more. Length-wise it has grown at its normal pace of 1/2 an inch a month so no big changes there either. Which brings me to one of my post-pregnancy fears: hair loss. Once estrogen levels go back to normal, the hair's natural growth phase also returns. It's not uncommon for clumps of hair to fall out in the shower and thinning to occur. Usually it looks scary, but it's just your hair going back to what you had before. I fear that I will get none of the benefits of pregnancy hair, and all of the negatives. I've seen with my own eyes other Asian women lose a good chunk of hair. And they didn't return to what they had before, but some serious thinning! Just based on personal anecdotes, I feel that this often happens to pregnant women over the age of 30 (of which I am). Living in a city like San Francisco, it's quite easy to forget that a pregnancy at or over the age of 35 is automatically considered high-risk = OLD :-P

Luckily crazy hair loss didn't happen to my mom the first time around, but she ended up having seven kids so she's a bit of an outlier. Not to mention that it was hard to jog her memory of hair patterns after my sister was born. As a precaution, I've already started to keep all the follicles I can - including the grey ones which I usually pluck out since they all annoyingly grow in one particular spot on the back of my head! I figure I need all the follicles I have until we find out what the situation looks like after birth. Poor Baby Bearhat, in addition to most likely needing glasses (both CGB and I have terrible eyesight), the poor thing has a choice of my frizzy multiple personality locks or CGB's flat, super straight, hard-to-style hair.