The Growing Experiment

My hair needs help.  I had heard that during pregnancy you get great looking hair, and while at first I didn't notice any changes, some point after the half-way mark I noticed I definitely had fuller hair.  Unfortunately, the cause of that was not a sudden, rapid growth of a bunch of hair, but rather the slow down of the natural shedding process.  It is normal to lose up to 100 hairs per day, but when you're pregnant, the hormone changes in your body keep hairs in your scalp longer than usual. There is also some research that suggests that the hair strands actually thicken during pregnancy.  Its a nice perk, as your belly is growing and you are potentially dealing with all the unpleasant effects pregnancy can have, that at least you have lovely hair.  A good hair day helps make everything a bit better, no?

And then the baby comes, and you're so tired and busy you barely have time to even wash your hair for the first couple months, and then just as things seem to fall in to place and you feel like life has a new routine that allows you (a little) time to do your hair, those hormones have chilled out and your scalp starts catching up with all the shedding it was holding back on.  And you feel like you might be actually going bald, how much hair comes out in the shower.  You actually clog drains.  This goes on for a couple months - everyone in the house finds your hair everywhere, the vacuum gets clogged, you feel like you leave a trail of hairs wherever you go.  But then it settles back to normal.

All this random-length regrowth - and did I mention its curly?

But guess what? All those hairs fell out in rapid succession, and now your head is growing back hairs, which is good, but also means you have a lot of short 'baby' hairs poking out all over at once (and if you're like me, a lot seem to grow back grey).  Short baby hairs of different lengths make hair looks like its broken and frizzy.  This is my current state.  I get it why so many women with long hair cut it short after the baby comes.  It gets in the way, baby's like to pull it, and long hair with short baby hairs don't mix well.

Current length.
 

So I recently updated my cut with overall layers, because I still wanted my length, and the layers help camouflage the baby hairs.  But the growing out feels slow.  So I'm going to attempt to ramp things up.   I'm going to get some hair growth vitamins and give them a shot.  This gal says her vitamin cocktail has her hair growing 2 inches in a month.  I'm going to start with the Viviscal and the Biotin, and see if anything changes. Also, while the vitamins work from the inside, to keep things healthy on the outside, I use Clear Scalp and Hair Shampoo, to keep the hair I have and my scalp healthy.  And to build up strength, a couple times a week I apply  Eqyss Mega-Tek Equine Rebuilder.  This is marketed for horses manes, tails and hooves, but it is an effective and safe product for people as well (and smells good).

I'll keep you posted on my progress.

What are your tricks for your hair health?