Hair dye when pregnant, or henna over highlights!

[SpanielFace]

I'm 20 weeks pregnant with DC2. I've been having my hair highlighted for almost 20 years (!!!), including in my last pregnancy. Since last year, I've been totally fed up with the maintenance - my natural hair colour which was dark blonde in my teens is now mid-dark brown, so I've been trying to go back to my roots. I've been having all-over colour put on at the hairdressers, but it has kept fading quickly over the highlighted part & seems to be taking forever.

Since being pregnant, I've not had my hair coloured as I was always told that all-over dye was much less safe than highlights while pregnant. So, my hair is now a fetching 3-shade mess - dark brown roots with a very few greys, about three inches of badly faded brown colour in the middle which looks almost red in the sunshine, and over processed blonde ends where the dye has completely faded over the highlights. It's awful, and getting me down!

I don't want to cut all the colour out, it's about shoulder length at the moment, and I look awful with short hair. It's straight-ish, fine, and sadly a bit thin due to losing loads after having DS and also developing a thyroid problem.

I've been looking at lush henna as a more natural alternative to dye while pregnant, but now I'm not sure if the chemicals in dye are as big an issue as I thought - there doesn't seem to be a definitive answer online. Also not sure how henna would react with my multi-coloured mess?

Any advice from anyone gratefully received!

My hairdresser refused to apply my usual dye to my hair and would only do highlights, as the risk comes from the chemicals sitting too close to the scalp apparently. I moved to Aveda and use their semi permanent vegetable colours now. I wouldn't do a home dye in pregnancy, personally.

The main reason not to dye your hair during pregnancy is that the colour can take funny, like only in some places or not at all.

Absolutely, it won't harm you or the baby but could look patchy. I had mine done though through both pregnancies and it was fine.

You can have colour applied like highlights (in foils) to help darken it slightly and blend your roots. This way it won't touch your scalp. I think they call this lowlights? See if you've got an Aveda salon locally and ring them to see if they could help. You want to avoid the PPD chemical especially. Aveda semi tints smell so much better than regular ones which helps if you're feeling a bit sensitive!

Or go for an ombre and take advantage of your lighter ends. You could have a few fine highlights around the front to blend any greys.

Be careful with henna. My hairdresser warned me off using it if I thought I'd ever want to use another dye on my hair afterwards as it causes some odd reaction apparently. If I did use henna (or any dye that has henna in it - look carefully at the ingredients!) I'd have to grow it out if I wanted a colour change.

No idea about the pregnancy issue and hair dye, but if you wanted something less nasty and wanted a henna colour I'd recommend Herbatint or Vegetal. It depends what you want though, but I used a combination of henna red and mahogany blonde on my highlighted hair and it looked gorgeous (like I'd had red lowlights - I liked the streaks though). Comes in either permanent or semi-permanent.