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Home › Articles › Pregnancy › Where Did All My Hair Go?

Where Did All My Hair Go?

Postpartum Telogen Effluvium

By Teri Brown

Pages:  1  2  3  

Female hair loss is a relatively common condition experienced by women who have given birth. Understanding hair loss is important, as it can take some of the fear out of finding handfuls of hair in the hairbrush, shower drain and even in the fists of your curious newborn.

"A few months after I delivered my twins, I started noticing a lot of hair in my hairbrush," says Jennifer Hans, mother of three from Fort Wayne, Ind. "The brush, which I cleaned only occasionally in the past, needed to be cleaned every three or four days. It seemed like I was losing a ton of hair!"

Although Hans' hair loss didn't become visually noticeable, there are other women who aren't so lucky. Tenna Perry of Porter, Texas, saw definite signs of a receding hairline and the hair at the crown of her head was also visibly thin.

"It wasn't possible to brush my waist length hair without cleaning the hair out of the brush at least once," says Perry. "The drainage in the bath was a problem because of the hair clogs that would accumulate with each washing. I never realized how much hair I had until I started seeing it coming out on its own!"

Defining Postpartum Hair Loss
A general thinning of the hair, occurring during a period of months, is a medical condition known as telogen effluvium. It is most often caused by a traumatic physical event such as childbirth. The event results in a disruption of the normal hair cycle and subsequent shedding of the hair.

Dr. Thomas J. Waliser, a physician at The Russell Center for Women in Englewood, Colo., says that in order to understand telogen effluvium, we must understand the cycle of healthy hair growth. According to Dr. Waliser, normal hair growth occurs in three cycles:

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