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Pregnancy

18th Oct 2019

Where my curls at? Did pregnancy cause my hair to straighten?

As a teen with curly hair in the age of the GHD, I often wished my ringlets away.

Around 10 years later, my wish actually came true, a side effect of pregnancy that I wasn’t expecting.

It turns out pregnancy does a lot more than completely change your body, it can also change your hair.

 

It’s pretty common for your hair to change during pregnancy.

On my son, it completely dried out and became horribly matted. On my daughter, it was thick and shiny.

One thing stayed the same both times though as I lost my curls. Even though my hair is naturally curly, I could not keep a coil or ringlet in my hair to save my life. No matter what I did my hair stayed flat.

 

I didn’t know what was going on so of course, I consulted Google. I found that I wasn’t alone and other women had experienced the same. Their curls and waves completely lost their shape and went straight.

Not only that but I found women who experienced the exact opposite! Straight haired ladies suddenly found themselves with big bouncing curls.

I’ve spent most of my life trying to tame my mane so I can’t imagine how these gals, so used to low maintenance hair coped.

 

It wasn’t just the shape of my hair that the pregnancy hormones affected either. Oh no, my hair colour was under attack too.

As anyone who knows me will tell you, I’m a hair dye addict. I’ve been colouring my hair since I was 14 and it has been an adventure. My hair has been everything from bleach blonde to bright pink and all the colours in between.

During pregnancy though, the colour you put into your hair is not necessarily the colour you’re going to end up with. This is due to a change in oestrogen levels. I personally found it impossible to keep a colour in my hair. It felt like any dye I put in washed out straight away.

Though I won’t complain too much as some women have experienced their colours turning unusual shades, particularly green.

 

So there you have it. Pregnancy now includes a total makeover complete with hairstyle and colour.

Now if it would trim itself and throw itself into a nice chignon or french braids that’d be great.

Did you experience anything similar when you were pregnant? Tweet us at @herfamilydotie or leave a comment on our Facebook page.