Ashamed to admit this

I don't know if this has happened to anyone else, but I seem to be losing a significant amount of hair since our baby George's stillbirth. I'm four months post-partum and I have handfuls of hair coming out daily - way more than the typical losing the lush-extra-hair-grown-during-pregnancy phase.

And it really upsets me.

The last time this happened to me was when I was 16. We found out that our Grandpa had contracted the HIV virus three months before Canada's Red Cross started screening blood products. He had a quadruple bypass and in the saddest of ironies the operation that gave him a new lease on life for a few years ultimately claimed him at just 65 years of age. It occurs to me now that I battled pneumonia around Christmas the year my Grandpa's health deteriorated and he died in May, just as I battled pneumonia during my pregnancy from December to April before our son died in May this year.

Just after Grandpa died and our family decided to go public with his AIDS-related death (this was 1986 - when people were terrified and blaming the gay community for the disease and lashing out at people with the disease; my father and his sister and my Grandma decided that we could help stop this anti-homosexual blame and other cruelty toward people with AIDS by going public with the death of a World War II veteran and retired military officer), my hair started falling out like crazy.

Not fun for a 16-year-old girl. At the time a doctor diagnosed me with telogen effluvium. I've never forgotten it. He said it would pass, that my body would miss a few natural hair growth cycles but I would recover and it would all be normal again. Thank heavens, I thought with relief and stared with terror at my father's bald head. And the doctor was right. It took the summer and it got really scary thin (some strangers thought I must be having chemotherapy) but it was back to normal in time for school the next fall.

And now, it's happening again. After each shower I have to wipe up fistfuls of hair from the bottom of the shower stall. I won't even have a bath any more because so much hair ends up floating in the tub that it reminds me of swimming in water full of seaweed. If I brush my hair, I end up emptying the bristles time and again. Ugh.

My father's jokes of "Daddy's little girl" as he patted my head were never funny back in the eighties and now my husband smirks when I show him a clump of hair in dismay and reminds me that my dad's is a baldie. Why don't the men in my life see that this is not a laugh riot for me????

Now, as a 38-year-old grieving mother I can rationalize that the combination of pneumonia and the shock of stillbirth to my system has probably resulted in a recurrence of this telogen effluvium. It will pass. I won't have to chop off my long hair and it will get thicker in a few months. I'm taking my vitamins and trying to rest despite my sleeplessness and anxiety.

But it still bugs me. I feel very vain admitting this, but I don't want to have thin hair. I don't like this. What if it doesn't stop this time? Additionally, I have roseacea (the curse of the Celts - oh joy - thank you Irish gene pool). So the stress of the last four months also has my cheeks flaming and those darn spots coming out. I want to wear a bag over my head and hide from the world. My skin was better in high school.

And then I feel guilty. My baby has died and I'm worried about my looks???? Take all my hair, God, let my cheeks flame and sear with discomfort; just give me back my baby and I won't even whimper a complaint.