Losing Your Hair? Is Your Mirena the Cause?

I’m re-posting this blog post, “I’m Losing My Hair.  Is My Mirena to Blame?” today because after all this time it is still the most-searched post.  I’m years out from my Mirena being removed and one kid later.  Ahem.  It took almost a year but my hair did grow back.  The symptoms like weight gain, feeling like I was being electrocuted and having a hard time focusing stopped almost as soon as my Mirena was removed.  Some people love this low-dose hormone birth control but it isn’t for everyone. 

It’s typical to lose your hair after you have a baby. It happened with TD and then again with The Comedian. It’s also typical to see your doctor for birth control options post-baby if you are not willing to get knocked up again.

When I encountered the Mirena IUD it seemed like the perfect option. One quick doctor visit and I was good to go for the next five years. If I wanted more kids in that time I could have it removed. I read all the brochures, did some research and talked to friends who had used Mirena as well. It was my golden ticket to no thought birth control. Yippie Skippy!

That was until I started losing my hair. I didn’t pay much attention to all the hair collecting in my brush, shower, comb and sink. At first. I did notice that I was cleaning them all out quicker than before. My hamster on a wheel brain pushed it aside. There were stubby pieces of hair that stuck out and refused to be tamed too. I didn’t know it was from re-growth (a good sign) because I had lost that whole section of hair. Maybe it was from coloring my hair myself? More recently I thought-maybe it was from the grilling accident of 2009? When I went to my hair stylist this past week she seemed concerned.

“Is everything OK?” She asked as she combed out my just washed hair. I nodded yes. “Are you sure? Are you feeling OK? Stressed? Not sleeping?” She probed. I looked at her in the mirror and paused. “I am tired. The kids haven’t been sleeping well. I would like more work too… Why?” I asked. “Because you are losing a lot of hair. The baby is almost a year. You should not be losing this much hair. I don’t want to freak you out but when I was coloring it there were whole sections that are gone. It’s so thin. These spiky pieces…” She went on and on. She told me about women with thyroid problems and my heart raced.

WHAT THE?! I’m going bald?

I began to think about all the hair I had seen floating around my bathroom the last few weeks. I talked to my mother who said, “I didn’t say anything but at lunch today I could see through your hair.”

Heart seizes. Again.

So I googled. ‘Hair loss and women.’ ‘Thyroid symptoms’. ‘Thyroid problems in women’. I don’t have any symptoms except hair loss. I’m one of the healthiest people I know.

Then I had a thought. What if it’s my IUD? My body has never agreed with any birth control/hormone option I have gone with and the Mirena is a low-dose hormone IUD versus the no hormone, copper Paraguard IUD. I googled ‘Mirena and hair loss’.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

The search was scary, sad, heart-wrenching and my gut instinct went wild. I wanted to claw at my abdomen and get the thing out of me stat. The idea that I now have to search for another form of birth control pisses me off. I’m so sick of dealing with this issue. It’s been almost fifteen years of this and no option has ever been a good one for me. I just want it gone. I want my hair back (six months post-removal is the typical time frame for regrowth) and I want Mirena to come clean. I never read about hair loss in my research and brochures. My doctor didn’t discuss this as one of the side effects. I’m angry, sad and feeling futile. Now, I need to look into hair treatments such as PRP hair restoration.

This topic of birth control seems to always bring this about in me. Anyone else out there feel this way? Anyone?