Pregnancy and Hair

**gin** · February 15th, 2020, 11:02 PM

OK, I'm going to revive this thread as I'm 18.5 weeks pregnant now! So far I haven't noticed too much difference, except that MAYBE my shedding is a little less the past couple of weeks (from ~45 hairs/day to ~35 hairs/day - and yes, I keep track of my shedding because I'm nerdy like that!). At the very beginning of my pregnancy my scalp seemed to be a little more oily, but that didn't stay and it seems back to normal now. I have no idea if my hair is growing faster or not since I haven't measured it in awhile... maybe I'll go do that soon!

**hayheadsbird** · February 16th, 2020, 04:57 PM

Congratulations!
I think you just lose less hair during pregnancy, so when it sheds after it can go into over drive, or normalise out. I did have growth spurts, but only noticed a shed after the last one, and it wasn't excessive. My skin really changed last time though, much drier and I was easily able to stretch washes past a week. Still nursing 2 years on but my skin has gone back to normal, and settled back to 3/4 day hair wash cycle.

**Gaalsong** · February 25th, 2020, 08:34 AM

Hi guys,
I am 19 weeks pregnant with my third, and my hair is shedding less. Last time I was pregnant, my hair was just thick and glorious the whole time. Of course, after the birth, I had a huge shed. Because my hair is so long, the amount that came out looked horrifying. But you couldn't really tell much of a difference on my head. The hair did get back to normal after a while, but I have hip-length hair and so I had some short hairs sticking out as things were growing back. My hair texture didn't change.

**cm006j** · February 25th, 2020, 12:05 PM

The only change I noticed during pregnancy was it literally just stopped growing. I gained maybe a quarter of an inch over nine months both times! I didn’t notice a shed after but I know have massive shirt regrowth all around my face so I guess it must have happened!

**hayheadsbird** · February 25th, 2020, 04:13 PM

I def have texture changes after pregnancy too, although it's possibly age related. From 1a/b though to heading for 2b.

**gin** · February 25th, 2020, 05:59 PM

I washed my hair today and there was a drastic decrease in shed hairs compared to other wash days. Prior to pregnancy I was shedding maybe 110-120 hairs on wash day. The last month or so it had decreased a little bit to 80-90. Today, it's looking to be less than 55ish or less! (It's in the low-40s now and I'm just accounting for how many more hairs that shed before I go to bed)

It's such a huge difference that I just had to say something.

I'm super curious to see how my next few washes go...

Outside of this decrease in shedding, I haven't noticed anything else different hair-related so far. I'll be 20 weeks tomorrow!

**demonamay** · March 30th, 2020, 08:03 PM

my hair grew like a weed when I was pregnant. Didn’t have texture changes though it is possible. Some women go through hair changes that recover after giving birth.

**gin** · April 19th, 2020, 11:10 PM

I went from averaging ~45 shed hairs/day to basically 12-14 hairs/day. I'm not looking forward to the postpartum shed that's going to happen!

It looks like growth wise it's about the same as before. I'm about to enter my third trimester now.

**gin** · June 20th, 2020, 08:56 PM

Another update (in case anyone might be interested in the future). I'm 36.5 weeks now, so home stretch! I've found that as I've gotten further along in the pregnancy, shedding has basically also decreased over time. Basically I shed less and less week over week. I'm now at the point where I average between 6-8 shed hairs/day. Crazy!