Hilaria Baldwin says she's losing her hair after having a baby. Is that normal?
Hilaria Baldwin welcomed her fourth child in May, and she just revealed in a new Instagram post that she’s suffering from postpartum hair loss.
“One thing I wasn’t prepared for the first time around was the postpartum hair loss,” she captioned a shot of herself breastfeeding her son Romeo. “I would actually say that it is the thing I dread the most when having a baby. Mine always starts to shed around now, picks up (like horror film style) around 3 months, then reduces to normal shedding 6 weeks after that.”
After that, the “regrowth awkward process” starts, she wrote, with “tiny, sticking up hairs, all over my head.” She said she finds it “upsetting each time around — even though I know what to expect now.” Baldwin added that her dermatologist recommended that she take vitamins to “speed up the regrowth,” although it won’t stop the hair loss.
A post shared by Hilaria Thomas Baldwin (@hilariabaldwin) on Jul 28, 2018 at 1:15pm PDT
It’s not often discussed, but postpartum hair loss is extremely common, Gary Goldenberg, MD, assistant clinical professor of dermatology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “I see patients like this almost daily,” he says. “Women may notice a high number of hairs on their brush, in the tub, or simply by running one’s hands through the hair. It can be very distressing.”
During pregnancy, a woman’s body shuttles nutrients away from her hair follicles to focus on other areas, like getting proper nutrients to the growing fetus, Goldenberg explains. Hair can also look thicker during pregnancy due to the slowing of the normal progression of hair from the growing stage to the resting stage, Joshua Zeichner, MD, a New York City board-certified dermatologist, tells Yahoo Lifestyle. As a result, women shed less hair than normal during this time.
But after a woman has a baby, her hormone levels drop and cause her hair to shed pretty rapidly, Zeichner says. And, when the hair grows back, it can stick out in little tufts.
If you’re worried about postpartum hair loss, taking vitamins like biotin and vitamin B, or having platelet-rich plasma injections (in which your own blood is injected into the hair follicles) can help with regrowth, Goldenberg says. But, again, it won’t stop the shedding from happening.
If you’re struggling with postpartum hair loss, know that it’s normal. But if it bothers you, talk to a dermatologist, who may be able to help advise you on next steps.
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