I’ve had long hair most of my life. I always get to the point where I need to cut it badly and it sheds constantly. It seems like I’ve always been shedding. I’ve had that hair captured in between my butt cheeks that is such a thrill to pull out when I shower too. All this to say I never really thought much of it before.

For a month or two in pregnancy I was shedding. It was more prominent than before, so noticeable to me that when I went to work I was concerned about sitting too long in a chair because someone else might use it and notice a clump of my hair left behind. I thought it was strange because I knew it was a postpartum thing and didn’t expect it at the time. My mom suggested I must be growing new hair and it might be pushing the old hair to fall out, so I wrote it off.

After giving birth I expected my hair to basically just come off all at once. I was pleased when a month had gone by and I wasn’t shedding. Then two months went by and I thought I wouldn’t have any shedding at all. Three months hit and there it was, almost eerily exactly the three month mark. It was a considerable amount of shedding, no joke. I felt clumps of it come out at once, and it seemed that I was constantly feeling the sensation of something tickling my arms, legs, or back lower than the length of my actual hair. However, I never got concerned I was losing too much and I’m still not, but it happened and it is very real. It seems to be never ending too.

When it started, I thought nothing of it. Unfortunately(fortunately?) I have the luck of being a mom with a five month old who is crawling regularly, especially to places she does not belong. She has been doing so since she was about four and a half months old. An infant who even before that was moving around enough that shedding hair had become a problem.

I don’t get anxious about much. I have been considered by others to be a laid back person, but when I saw an Instagram reel about babies having to go to the hospital because they lost circulation in their fingers and toes because of hair so tightly wound, I started to get slightly paranoid. We regularly have to check her fingers and toes and I’m always trying to find a place to stash the hair I collect somewhere that isn’t the floor before I get a chance to throw it away. 

Brycen vacuums almost weekly, which is rare for us. Despite this, we feel the vacuum does little to decrease the hair she manages to capture. Additionally, she always has globs of cat hair from her clenching fistfuls of both Noodle and Chili in her warm, slightly sweaty hands. We are very vigilant however, because we like her ten fingers and toes very much the way they are.

I am also not the only one who has been shedding in postpartum period. Aspen had been born with a head full of hair, but by four months she had a weird bean sprout of hair right on top, and the thick dark and choppy hair at the back of her head. At 5 months now we have really been seeing the hair is growing again, but she did want to compete with me for a little while for who lost the most hair. I think I won. I should get a gold medal.

The hair shedding is for real and I’m fortunate enough to not feel like I am going to be bald despite it. She does have a new fascination with my hair, pulling it, trying to eat it, and using it to support her weight when she stands. I’m definitely due for a mom cut but the weather is getting colder so I’m considering suffering as an alternative. I could also take a supplement to help decrease the shedding and improve hair quality, but I am not and there’s no reasonable explanation why not. I work full time and have legitimate mom brain, there’s hardly any chance I’ll remember to take it daily.

So for now we keep this manageable stress a routine and there is some slight pleasure in extracting the hair from her fists, a sensation similar to the popping of a zit. But I’ll tell you what, the hair on my legs and armpits does not seem to be falling off or struggling to grow so it can’t be all bad.