Rogaine and pregnancy

June 9, 2008 6:21 PM

Anyone used Rogaine (women, I mean; I'm a woman); had success with it, stopped using it to get pregnant/nurse, and had all her hair fall out?

I'm hoping to get pregnant soonish, so I need to stop using the Rogaine 5% that my derm suggested and has been working okay for about five years. But I'm terribly afraid of my hair falling out and being a patchy bald lady. Any experience with this? I'm 34, fwiw.

posted by pipti to Health & Fitness (4 answers total)

My wife doesn't have any experience with Rogaine, but when she was pregnant, she had the most full, thick head of hair, mainly from the prenatal vitamins, we guess.


Now, after giving birth and stopping breastfeeding, she started shedding like a Labrador retriever in August.

How Rogaine will affect that I'm not sure, but while you pregnant, most people indicate an increased amount of hair.
posted by jrishel at 6:32 PM on June 9, 2008

Response by poster: Yup, that's what I'm afraid of. I understand most women have thicker hair while pregnant--and so stopping the Rogaine might not be immediately apparant--but then after delivery they lose a lot of hair, even if they don't have FPB. And so for someone who was using Rogaine the hair loss might be even worse.
posted by pipti at 6:39 PM on June 9, 2008

i'm not a doctor, but my hair was thinning a bit due to a medical condition and i was looking into rogaine. it turned out not to be a good fit for my situation, but from what i understand, it doesn't make your hair fall out worse once you stop using it. it just goes back to falling out at the pace it was before you used it.

so stopping won't make you instantly go bald, but because hair constantly sheds and is replaced, you will need to use it continually to grow hair back and maintain the results.
posted by thinkingwoman at 6:48 PM on June 9, 2008

Pregnancy hormones promote hair growth, so even hairs that would be in the resting phase get kicked into the growth phase. Once the hormones stop, lots of hairs go into the resting phase. Good question; you might find an answer at a hair growth clinic.
posted by theora55 at 8:01 AM on June 10, 2008