 Ladies, I'm Bianca Renee, and you're watching Bianca Renee Today, and today we're gonna talk about everything postpartum, that glorious time where you say goodbye to your once in shape fit body and your long, luxurious, full hair and any sleep you might have had before. But although I did endure a lot of postpartum pain and physical changes to my body, I can now say, looking at my beautiful six month old baby boy, that it was all worth it. Now the two most common physical things women talk about postpartum is postpartum weight loss where we all try to snap back to our original state and postpartum hair loss where we lose all the hair that we might have gained or retained during pregnancy. So I'm gonna talk about my experience and those two departments. But before I go into that, I do wanna mention our inner physical health. I guarantee you that your baby does not care about your edges and does not care about your new body fat. In fact, my baby actually enjoys squeezing the new belly rolls that I have in excess skin. Why is that their favorite toy? But what the baby does care about is having you around for as long as possible. So I'm trying not to focus not just on my physical appearance, but on my physical health. So one thing I've been doing to get some extra nutrients is taking a multivitamin by ritual. This course of today's video is sponsored by ritual. Ritual makes an essential for women multivitamin that I've been taking every day. It has nine high quality nutrients that are really hard to get enough of every day. And I know I'm not getting them in my everyday diet. Those nine nutrients include folate, omega-3, vitamin B12, vitamin D3, iron, vitamin K2, boron, vitamin E, and magnesium. These vitamins are vegan, sugar-free, they have no GMOs, they're gluten and allergen-free and they're made with a no nausea design so they're really easy on the stomach and don't make me nauseous. They also have this little capsule in here that gives it like this great little minty taste. So it really tastes like you're swallowing mints instead of pills. Not only are these easy to swallow capsules transparent, ritual is also transparent with where they source their ingredients. So you know exactly what you're getting with no sketchy fillers and you can go on their website and see exactly what each ingredient does. So ritual is actually a subscription service. So after 30 days, another bottle will just arrive at your doorstep. One last thing for our mommy brain to have to remember. Each bottle is $30 so basically you're getting your nutrients for a dollar a day. But, ritual is actually giving all of you 10% off your first three months so make sure to use my link that I'll put in the description box, go to ritual.com slash beyondgrinne. So now that you know how I get my nutrients inside my body, let's talk about my actual body. Here's a photo of my body before I decided to have a baby. Rest in peace to my abs. Here's how I looked during most of my pregnancy. Many people didn't even know I was pregnant. I got a lot of, you don't even look pregnant. You only look pregnant from the front, not from the back. And are you sure you're pregnant? You're so small. Word of advice, never talk about how large or small a woman is. So it's never good to say, you're so big because just nobody wants to be called big. Even if we know we are and we know we're carrying a baby, it's just something we just don't want to hear. And if someone is small, we also don't want to hear you don't look pregnant because you definitely are. And then it scares you and you're like, well, is everything okay? Am I too small? Is the baby not healthy? It's just too much. The best thing to say to someone who's pregnant is you look beautiful, period. But here is me at the end of my pregnancy where I was at my biggest. I eventually blew up in like the last two-ish months. But what you should be aware of is that once you push out the baby, you don't just go back to normal. I personally gained 41 pounds in my pregnancy. My baby came out as eight pounds, one ounce. So spoiler alert, the other 33 pounds don't also come out with the baby. So immediately after the baby left my body, this is how I looked. I know, very sexy, right? You gotta love the hospital diaper I'm basically wearing. And yeah, I still look pregnant. So one thing that I did learn about my postpartum body is that after you have a baby, you still have contractions. What do you know? So a little freebie that you get from breastfeeding is that when you're breastfeeding, it sends a signal to your uterus, which then contracts. So those contractions that you're having are actually shrinking your uterus. So you're like, hey, I'm sacrificing my boobs for you. You could at least give me a small tummy as a consolation prize. So fortunately, I personally lost majority of my baby weight from breastfeeding. For the first maybe month or two, I still actually felt those contractions. But I told myself, it's making you skinny, it's making you skinny, it's making you skinny. And I kind of just like pushed through the uncomfortableness of it. I am exclusively breastfeeding and my baby likes to eat all the time, hence his little chunky thighs. So that actually worked out for me. My original post-pregnancy plan was to continue to go to the gym Monday through Friday like I did before I got pregnant and while I was pregnant, but then COVID happened. So all the gyms were closed. It's really hard to stay motivated to work out from home. But I have to admit that has been one positive side to this whole quarantine thing is that I got no place to go. So what clothes am I really trying to fit into? But regardless, you always gotta remind yourself that you just pushed out a actual baby human. Give yourself a break. Remember, took your body nine months to stretch out. So give it some time to stretch back into place. There's always a lot of pressure to snap back, but for why? So it's a little timeline of my baby weight journey starting from the beginning, month by month, getting a little bit slimmer. I really had a lot of extra skin that I wasn't sure where that was gonna go. But this is how I look today and I'm totally fine with it for being six months out. And now the topic I know many of you have asked me about which is have I experienced postpartum shedding? Yes, I have and I actually saved it for you to show you. So here is my shedding from before I got pregnant and while I was pregnant. Just a little hairball, nothing crazy, a very decent amount of hair shedding. Postpartum usually doesn't kick in right away like you'd pop out the baby and then your hair falls out. It's usually around month, four, month, five. That's when things start to get real. While you're pregnant, your estrogen levels are really high. So usually you'd see a lot of hair growth during your pregnancy. If your hair is not growing, you're having a really good hair retention, meaning not as much hair is now falling out anymore because of all the different levels and hormones in your body. But then once you have the baby, your hormone levels dip and so do your hair follicles. You go from losing 100 hair strands a day to up to 400 hair strands a day. Let me show you the amount of shedding I had today after I took a shower. So this is how much hair I lost today. Definitely more shedding than I'm used to. But around that four month mark, I probably had maybe double this amount. And that was kind of weird. I personally only noticed the shedding while I'm detangling in the shower. So while I was detangling little strands of hair just easily came off. So that was kind of concerning, especially when you had a curly hair channel. But I just had to remind myself that it's totally normal. I just had a baby. This is just one of the beautiful things that happened along with our stretch marks. I know some of you are looking at this like, that's it. That's the much shedding I have and I don't even have any kids. It's possible. Everybody is different. So once again, do not compare yourself to other people. But after doing some research, I found that postpartum hair loss should stop after your baby hits one years old. So if after a year, you're still losing a ridiculous amount of hair, it is best to consult a healthcare provider or a specialist to see if there's some other underlying health issues that are making your hair fall out. So what can you do, you ask? Well, within my research, I learned that many people say that there's nothing you could do to stop postpartum shedding. It's just part of life. But there are things you could do to minimize it or make it come back sooner. Now, although you see this much hair loss, you also are looking at my hair now thinking, well, your hair looks fine. That actually looks really long. And that could be because I was trying to prevent as minimal hair loss as possible. One of the most common tips people say is to continue to take your prenatal vitamins. One thing that I did learn is it's supposed to be taking your prenatal vitamins before you get pregnant. So if you're trying to get pregnant, you should start taking them now. Then you take them throughout your pregnancy and then you continue to take them after. But technically, nowhere on any of my prenatal vitamins that I've tried state that it's going to help with hair growth or prevent hair loss. It's kind of just one of those motherly things that gets passed around. And since there are definite vitamins in prenatals, it doesn't hurt to take, but it's not a scientific fact where if you take prenatal vitamins, you won't have any shedding. I think it just helps. If you are one of my subscribers, you also know that I started a hair growth challenge this year. So I've been taking things to grow my hair, including the Curlsmith Ultimate Length 30 Day Therapy. I've been applying the Scalp Stimulating Booster and the Curlsmith Full Length Density Elixir. I apply this to my scalp every morning and this to my scalp every night. If you wanna know more about these Curlsmith products, I have a full video. You guys can watch that out and see my full hair growth journey. Now I did see results from using these hair growth products, but still I got a couple of comments from people saying that my results were invalid because I just had a baby. Therefore, my hair is supposed to grow more after I have a baby. I thought that after you had a baby, you're supposed to lose your hair. So I thought these were gonna really prove a point because I was gonna fight an uphill battle of my hair falling out and trying to make it grow at the same time. If it didn't help with the shedding, it probably helped with just production of more hair. So even though my hair was falling out, it was making it so new hair was growing just as fast. So it was kinda just like this little cycle of hair falling out and new hair growing to where I'm able to retain my length, retain my volume and not experience any crazy balding or shedding. But let me give you some more tips you could do to help minimize your postpartum shedding. One thing that is involved with me applying these oils is doing scalp massages. I have to massage it in my scalp every morning and every night. So whether you have these oils are not any time you do a scalp massage, you are stimulating blood circulation in your scalp which is going to help with hair growth. I also was cautious of losing my edges so I got Jamaican Black Castor Oil and I applied it to my edges just to really get some extra nutrients along my hairline. You also want to avoid pulling your hair back in tight protective styles. Anytime you're pulling really hard, you're adding that tension to your edges which is gonna make that hair want to break more easily. So try not to put your hair in really super tight slick back ponytails or buns because right now your hair is very weak. One thing that I did like about the Curlsmith Ultimate Lengths 30 Day Therapy is that it contains biotin. Biotin is known for hair growth but also can sometimes cause acne. So I was really afraid to try these at first but fortunately as you can see acne free and I still got the biotin to help with my hair growth. In order to strengthen your hair we're also gonna take it back to some classic Bianca Renee tips which is to deep condition once a week. If you're already deep conditioning once a week this is already a part of your routine but having a deep conditioner is going to add those nutrients to your hair especially if you choose a protein treatment. So maybe do a protein treatment every other week just to strengthen your hair follicles. Your hair really is just a bunch of dead protein so protein is going to be essential for your hair whether it's in your products or whether you're eating it in your foods. So try to consume foods that are also high in protein. You also could do black tea rinses or a rice water rinse. I haven't done the black tea rinse yet let me know if you guys want me to try it but I did do a whole series on rice water rinses so it's a very kind of like messy DIY experience but it has its benefits. I much rather just use the Curlsmith products that have rice water in it. Although I say this tip on a daily basis this is definitely not the time to straighten your hair if you have curly hair or even if you have straight hair it's not a good time to be adding a lot of heat to your hair because that's definitely just going to add to the breakage. I would recommend using volumizing products so even if your hair is really thin or fine it could look more voluminous and you also want to avoid really heavy creams that are going to weigh down your already thin fine hair. So try to find some lightweight products to make your styling look a little bit more full. The last thing that I want to show you that you probably are going to need are some hair drains to catch all of your shedding. This is one from Amazon I put in my Amazon store. I use it in my shower to collect all the hair that does fall so you don't clog your sinks. This one is also amazing. It's called the Tub Shroom. It's also on Amazon. So you stick this in your sink and it catches all your hair so you could just take it out instead of all this going down your drain. So if you want to save some plumbing costs get yourself some hair stoppers. So that is my experience with postpartum shedding. I am losing more hair than I'm used to but fortunately it hasn't been excessive. I do think it's because of my normal hair routine of deep conditioning every week, doing protein treatments, avoiding certain bad ingredients, not applying heat to my hair, doing scalp massages and also taking that extra step of using hair growth products to encourage faster hair growth and length retention. If you experienced postpartum shedding as well I'd love to hear your story. Leave me a comment down below. And if you have any tips on weight loss after pregnancy or how to retain your hair or deal with postpartum shedding leave all that advice below. The more tips the better. Before you go make sure to give this video a thumbs up and subscribe. I post new videos every week. You also can follow me on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok at Ms. Bianca Renee. I'll see you guys next time. Thanks for watching Bianca Renee today.