I’m not gonna lie, this post is totally TMI. So if you don’t want to hear about lady business, just skip right over this and carry on.

Earlier this week, I finally sent an email to John the Midwife regarding my hair loss and seemingly endless visit from Aunt Flo. I know I haven’t talked about it much (because…um…EW) but yeah. Out of the last 9 weeks of my life, I’ve been bleeding about 6 of them. How awesome is that? I can barely be sarcastic about it because it makes me so crabby I’d like to rip my hair out…but I don’t really need to do that since it’s coming out in clumps ON ITS OWN.

Anyway, this was his response:

There can be spotting up to 4 months after insertion of Mirena but usually see it more with breast feeding. RN’s who take phone calls say it can be up to 6-8 months. One option maybe to try to stabilize the endometrium and stop the spotting by putting you on birth control for one or two cycles.

Hair loss should not be in any way due to the Mirena. Some women on DepoProvera have this but the amount of Progesterone in the Mirena is very minimal and is absorbed at the uterine cavity and not systemic like an injection. You are not the first to comment on how much hair loss this is postpartum, but I personally try to avoid hair loss as a topic as much as possible.

Call me if you want to try cycling with some birth control pills.

I love John the Midwife. (You see, he’s bald…hence the avoidance of hair loss topics…)

So…that’s that. We’re going to add a birth control pill on top of the Mirena. So now I’ll be SUPER INFERTILE for a couple months. I feel like I should be able to have some sort of superpower with my incredibly infertile self but when I think about the possibilities…well, I digress.

And the hair loss. I’ve read enough on other boards and spoken to enough moms to know that this is normal. Although entirely shitty, completely normal. I’m taking more steps to try to keep what I have in place (shampooing less, wearing my hair down more, not wearing in a ponytail to bed). It really does make me tear up on a daily basis though. I used to be able to pull it back in a big messy bun on my head…and now I can barely even make a bun. I can actually feel the hair in my head come loose – it’s like the follicles are smaller and are sliding out of the root. I just keep chanting in my head “it’ll grow back, it’ll stop eventually, it’ll grow back” but in the meantime it’s depressing me more than it probably should.

In other news – IT’S FRIDAY. Praise Jeebus!

The hubs’ dad came by just as I was feeding Abby yesterday morning – then I got her packed up and in her car seat. We took her out to his car, I strapped her in, gave her a kiss and thought to myself, “I’m doing it! And I’m not crying!”

Then she looked at me with eyes that (to me) read “Where am I going? Why aren’t you coming too?” and then I could feel it. A big fat ugly cry was coming my way. So I said goodbye to her and my father in law and shut the door and promptly lost my shit.

As quickly as it came on it subsided, and I reapplied my makeup and headed on my way to the train. I was weird/nice/still weird to be back at work. Most people said welcome back…a few people I passed in the halls gave a nod as if I’d never left (and in respect to them, they probably never knew I was gone). I finally will have my own desk again by tomorrow sometime (awesome) and will probably be getting something to work on soon. In the meantime, I’m working on my self-appraisal of my work completed last year. I keep finding myself wanting to add “…and I did it WHILE PREGNANT” to everything because really…it makes everything THAT MUCH HARDER, but I don’t think it’s entirely appropriate. But seriously – how many times was I about to toss my cookies all over my keyboard but I pressed on?! Or when it felt like Abby was going to fall out of my crotch…but I still kept working?! I should really get a 10% raise just for that fact.

When I picked Abby up at her grandparents house yesterday, she had just eaten and was in (seemingly) good spirits. And then a tantrum. Complete with gagging. (Have I mentioned she’s a fan of crying till she pukes? Cause she is.) I got her calmed down and back into her carseat and back home, where she eventually had another mini-tantrum. We’re pretty sure this is all centered around her not sleeping enough. We’re working on that.

Anyway – today is day two at work, and leaving Abby this morning was a little easier. Probably due to the fact that my father in law came over to watch her at our house today, and she hadn’t even woken up yet when I left. I just hope he doesn’t have a hard time finding his way around our house while we’re gone. Or that she doesn’t cry her eyeballs out. Or should I say “cry her formula out” because really, that’s more like it.

And thank you to my friend Sue for sending me this link on Facebook yesterday in response to my “…I’m not gonna cry, I’m not gonna cry…” status update. Because really, it’s alright to cry.