I remember standing in the shower one Tuesday morning, watching what felt like an entire wig’s worth of hair swirl down the plughole.
My eldest was screaming for her uniform from the landing, the baby was crying in the bouncer, and I was just stood there, staring at my hands, both covered in clumps of what used to be my hair. Glamorous, right?
After my first baby, I’d heard about postpartum hair loss, sure. A few strands here and there, the slightly wider parting everyone warned me about. But after my second? Nothing prepared me for it.
And by the time number three arrived, my hair had basically given up entirely. The luscious pregnancy hair I’d enjoyed whilst growing humans had completely abandoned me, leaving behind something that looked like it belonged on a half-chewed Barbie doll.
The Slow Realisation That I’d Stopped Caring
It’s funny how self-care becomes this abstract concept when you’re deep in the trenches of multiple children under five. Between the second and third baby, something shifted. I stopped blow-drying my hair.
Then I stopped using conditioner because, well, who has time for that extra step when someone’s always shouting “Mummy” from another room?
Eventually, I was just shoving it into the same greasy topknot every single day, telling myself I’d “sort it out tomorrow.”
Postpartum hair thinning, known as telogen effluvium, is a common condition that occurs when hormone levels drop back to their regular levels after childbirth, and whilst the hair loss is usually temporary, it can be a distressing experience for new mothers.
Distressing feels like an understatement when you’re already running on three hours of broken sleep and someone’s smeared Weetabix on your only clean jeans.
The texture changed too. What used to have a bit of life to it now just hung there, limp and lifeless, like it was as exhausted as I was.
Hormonal changes, particularly a decrease in oestrogen, commonly trigger hair shedding following major events like childbirth, and factors like low protein intake and iron deficiency can worsen the condition.
I was definitely guilty of the low protein bit – most days I was surviving on toast crusts and cold cups of tea.
Finding My Way Back, One Wash at a Time
It wasn’t some grand epiphany that made me start caring again. It was more like a gradual realisation that I didn’t recognise myself in photos anymore. Not in a dramatic, crisis sort of way, but in a “bloody hell, when did I start looking this knackered?” sort of way.
My hair was flat, thin, and doing absolutely nothing for my face, which already looked like it had been through several wars.
So I started small. Really small. I bought a decent hairbrush. Revolutionary, I know. Then I actually started reading the backs of shampoo bottles in the supermarket instead of just grabbing whatever was on offer.
I was looking for something, anything, that might help with the flatness and the thinning caused by all those hormonal shifts and the complete lack of time I had for myself.
That’s when I stumbled across volumizing shampoos that actually seemed designed for hair like mine – sad, tired, postpartum hair that needed all the help it could get. I wasn’t expecting miracles, but I was desperate enough to try something different.
Anything was better than the two-in-one I’d been using for six months because it saved thirty seconds in the shower.
The first time I used a proper volumising formula, I nearly cried. Not because it transformed me into some glossy-haired goddess overnight – it didn’t. But because for the first time in ages, my hair didn’t just lie there like a wet flannel on my head. It had a bit of bounce. A bit of life. It reminded me that underneath all the chaos and exhaustion, I was still in there somewhere.
The Reality of Hair Recovery and Motherhood
Look, I’m not going to sit here and pretend that better shampoo fixed everything.
Iron deficiency and anaemia during the postpartum period may have long-term health implications, and mothers with low iron stores may experience fatigue, altered cognition, and depressive symptoms.
I probably needed vitamins, more sleep, and about seventeen fewer responsibilities, but we work with what we’ve got.
What I did learn, though, was that those tiny acts of self-care between school runs and nap times actually matter. Even if it’s just using a shampoo that makes your hair feel a bit more like your own again.
Even if it’s taking an extra two minutes to actually massage it into your scalp instead of doing that frantic scrub-and-rinse thing we all do when someone’s banging on the bathroom door.
Iron deficiency is one of the most common nutritional deficiencies, particularly among women, and anaemia during pregnancy is one of the strongest predictors of anaemia postpartum, which can have serious consequences and long-term health implications for the mother and her infant.
I wish I’d known this earlier, honestly. Maybe I would’ve been kinder to myself about why I felt so rubbish all the time.
I also started looking at parenting resources from other mums who got it, who weren’t pretending that motherhood is all sunshine and perfectly styled hair. It helped to know I wasn’t alone in feeling like I’d lost a bit of myself along the way.
Small Wins in the Chaos
These days, my hair still isn’t what it was before kids. I’ve accepted that. The volume I had in my twenties is probably gone forever, buried somewhere beneath nappy changes and nursery rhymes. But it’s better than it was. And more importantly, I care about it again. Not in an obsessive way, just in a “this is still my head and I’d quite like to feel human” way.
I’ve learned that self-care as a mum doesn’t have to be spa days and fancy treatments.
Sometimes it’s just remembering to use conditioner. Sometimes it’s buying the slightly more expensive shampoo that actually does something.
Sometimes it’s looking in the mirror and thinking “yeah, alright, I don’t look half bad today” before someone wipes snot on your shoulder.
The truth is, we lose a lot between babies. Sleep, obviously. Time. Sometimes our sense of humour when someone asks “what do you do all day?” But we also lose little bits of ourselves – the person who had nice hair, or wore matching socks, or remembered to eat breakfast. And whilst everyone tells you that’s just part of motherhood, I think it’s okay to want some of those bits back.
My hair might never be as thick as it once was, and I’m still finding rogue strands on every surface of my house, but I’ve made peace with it. Because at the end of the day, I’m keeping three tiny humans alive, and if my hair’s a bit rubbish in the process, that’s probably fair enough.
But if I can make it slightly less rubbish with a decent volumising shampoo and thirty extra seconds in the shower? I’ll take that win.
