~Age: 22
~Number of pregnancies and births: one
~The age of your children, or how far postpartum you are: 13 months
I spent most of my childhood battling alopecia. I went to some of the top doctors, including Johns Hopkins, and they still couldn’t figure out a reason for my hair loss. By the time I hit puberty, my hair had all come back in. It was extremely frizzy, dry, and wispy and nothing I did was able to fix it. I faced so much ridicule and low self esteem from my battles.
When I got pregnant, my hair came in so beautifully…my eyebrows became noticable, and I was basking in it all. I felt so beautiful for once with my thick, perfect shiny hair. I guess I should have known it wouldn’t last though. About 3 months post partum, my hair started falling out. I figured it was the normal shedding that I had read about and didn’t think anything of it. Months and months went by and I was still shedding like crazy. At 11 months post partum…I went to the mirror and overnight I had grown a large baldspot at the top of my head. I panicked and spent the whole night sobbing…feeling so ugly…crying about how my body was doing this again after years of being fine. Crying about the loss of my “beauty”…and I spent the night looking at wigs.
I ended up going to the doctor for it the next day. Turned out, I had developed post-partum thyroidis…and it had turned into hypothyroid. Being left untreated, my hair was falling out from it. Now I am on the medication for life and my hair has stopped falling out…but two months later the bald spot still remains. My husband says he sees growth…I don’t see anything but bald, bald, bald. I have resorted to doing a comb over every day. I don’t know if it will grown in one day…or if this is for life. I do know one thing…the pregnancy did this to me. And despite how depressed I may feel about my appearance right now, my son brings me daily joy and the little stinker has enough hair for the two of us. The way he looks at me…he doesn’t see my bald spot…and even if he did, he would still find me beautiful.
