What to do with these 3 long hairs of mine? Keep or chop after PP hair loss

[AugustBabyBags]

Am 8 months postpartum and had really dramatic shedding (lost way over half my volume). It’s growing back now, but I’ve got loads of sticky-up tufts that I tame with a wax stick (thank goodness for beauty inventions!) and thick hairbands right now.

My hair is naturally thick/curly (3b), but at the moment it looks weird and wispy curly and only a bit better straight (I do mild Botox treatments to keep it smooth). It’s armpit length, which I’ve been growing for years, I’m so tempted to chop to a lob. The regrowth is only a couple of cm though, so I’m not sure.

I’ve spent years growing it to this length (mainly due to damage which I finally got under control just before I fell pregnant again).

Will a lob actually look fuller or will I regret it and miss the length? I’m so torn 😬

What worked better for you, keeping the length or cutting shorter while the new growth catches up?

Argh what to do?! I’m so bored of head bands and hair tied back 😑

It is really hard to say without seeing your hair!

I had severe pp hair loss, and absolutely hated the grow out phase. After my first pregnancy I had waist length hair, so the grow out took a really really long time! It was shorter before subsequent pregnancies and so a bit quicker.

I have wavy/frizzy hair. I once cut it to a lob and totally regretted it because it was even harder to keep it looking good. It needed straightening and styling every day because it needed to be in the right places to give the shape of the style.

Armpit length over-extended layers have by far been my most easy to maintain style. The over-extension during cutting the layers keeps enough weight in the layers to weigh down my hair and reduce the frizz/lift. Ordinary layers are a disaster because the top layers just lift/frizz more and I can’t control it.

Regrown sucks. I would recommend keeping it long. When the regrowth gets long enough, some layers or over-extended layers will blend the regrown in. But until then it is a case of head bands and smoothing products!

Thank you so much for your response @HappyAsASandboy appreciate it.
i know it’s hard to advise without pics, im just so paranoid about posting pics of myself on a public forum, even with attempts to anonymise 😅

I think you have helped me take a breather on the cut though. I woke up so fed up with this hair and am currently taking an hr off looking after baby during DP’s lunch hr and was just going to snip away!….BUT I’ve decided to use this time to try different styling instead and see if I can just something a bit different with what I have.

TBF it’s not hard to get it to look tidy and I just use a curly band to sleep with a lose top pony tail and it looks good tk go in the morning. Buf it’s just so flat, limp and sparse (for me), that it’s just not the exciting at all.

Maybe I just need to invest in more exciting head bands for now 😂

I did have to look up over extended layers as ive not heard that before. Is that long layers? My hair does have a few long layers in (when wearing curly I can’t get away with blunt cuts really) but even the layers aren’t adding anything to it right now.

It might be the same as long layers, I don’t know! I just know I went to a new hairdresser and asked what to do with my frazzled half grown out hair and this is what he did.

Layers are long and heavy, which helps stop my hair lifting and frizzing. But there’s lots of movement, so it doesn’t look “pulled down”.

I just googled and read a bit about over extended layers and it says it can make hair look thinner - that is absolutely not my experience! I have about 1/3 hair loss growing through at the moment (identifiable point of stress triggered the loss), and my recent cut has given my thin hair shape and movement.

My hairdresser said he learned over extended layers at Trevor Sorbie.