Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

For those of you who have not had the pleasure of gestating and then birthing a child, I'll give you a little tidbit of info you may not have known. It's about your hair.

In your day-to-day life, you lose a hair or two along the way. In most cases, other hair has grown in to replace it. This happens in men and women. It's not really something we think about (unless we are going bald). We take a shower, rinse, lather, repeat, and notice one or two hairs in our hands. Or we brush our hair and find there is some hair caught in the brush. On a daily basis, we deal with this, and dispose of it properly, not getting alarmed or freaked out.

Of course, for some people, no hair grows, and they begin to go bald. These people do freak out a little when they find hair in their brush, but they know that it's just going to happen and they have time to adjust. Rarely does one's hair fall out all at once unless radiation is involved. And when you are having chemo, your hair is really the least of your worries (not to say that it isn't a worry...)

So again, rarely do you lose large amounts of hair all at once. Unless, that is, you were pregnant, and now you are not. And this, I think, is one of the strangest parts of recovering from pregnancy. It really does affect your whole body, and here is the proof. When you are pregnant, your body holds on to everything. You stop losing hair, but you keep growing it. You therefore get a head of thick, luxurious hair that many will ooooh and aaaaah over. You forget what it's like to lose a hair or two here or there. You don't have to clean your brush or sweep up the shower drain. You forget that you ever even HAD to do those things.

And then one day, it starts to happen. Your body says, "What IS all this hair doing here? Doesn't anyone ever clean up around here? I'm not the MAID you know. Someone else could take care of this... Geez! Fine, then... I'll clean it up!" and the next thing you know, HANDFULS of hair are coming out. I'm not exaggerating. If I could think of a way to take a picture that wouldn't be extremely icky looking (hair on brush... eeeeuuuuw), I would. And it lasts for several days. I can run my hand through my hair and out comes a significant amount of it.

This shouldn't be alarming. After all, I have lots of extra hair right now. But it is still weird, Weird, WEIRD. I am reminded, perhaps inappropriately, of the scene in Poltergeist when the face is being pulled apart. It is so much hair that it really feels like I'm yanking out chunks of my body. It doesn't seem right. And yet, I am not bald. I am, in fact, still quite laden with hair.

Isn't pregnancy weird?