Nobody Warns You That 4 Months After The Baby, Your Edges Just Leave. And Nobody Tells You That You're Allowed To Be Sad About It.

I had a folder in my phone with screenshots about postpartum shedding because I wanted to be ready. I wasn't ready for this.

Maya Johnson

Houston, TX · June 2026 · 13 min read

I took this photo at 6:47 in the morning.

The baby had just gone back down. I had ten minutes before she'd wake up again, and I tried to brush my hair so I'd feel like a person for the day.

That's what came out. One stroke. The whole back of the brush.

I'm 32. I had my daughter four months ago. I have always had thick hair, through high school, through college, through my wedding.

I knew about postpartum shedding. "It comes back." "It's normal." "Telogen effluvium." I had a folder in my phone with screenshots because I wanted to be ready.

I wasn't ready for this.

It's been 4 months and the brush is fuller every morning. My edges are gone. My ponytail is half what it used to be. I keep my baby's hands away from my temples because I don't want her to grab what's left.

I've cried in the shower more times in the last two months than I did in the entire pregnancy.

But the worst part wasn't the hair.

It was thinking I was supposed to be happy right now. I just had my daughter. She's beautiful. She's healthy. And I cry every morning in a bathroom holding a brush.

I had started to think there was something wrong with me.

I want to say something to you before I go any further, because I need you to hear it the way I needed to hear it.

Your edges were part of how you recognized yourself in the mirror every morning. They were part of your style, your signature, the way you held your face. When you got dressed before the pregnancy and pulled your hair back, that was you. That woman had a certain hairline, a certain frame around her face.

She's gone right now. And nobody prepared you for that.

Every article I found was written for white women. The one time I added "for Black mothers" to my search, I found three posts.

Postpartum hair loss for Black women with 4A–4C hair, with protective style histories, with edges already under pressure, is not what those articles describe. Our hairlines were already working harder. The telogen effluvium hits differently.

And the shame is real. Nobody tells you that. The shame of sitting in a mom group and listening to other women talk about how their baby smiled for the first time, and you're sitting there thinking about your edges. The shame of hiding your temples in the photos your husband takes of you with the baby. The shame of wanting this, wanting your hair back, when you're supposed to be the most grateful person in the room.

But here's what I had to understand.

Wanting your hair back is not competing with loving your baby. They are not the same feeling and they don't cancel each other out.

You can hold your daughter and cry for your edges in the same minute. Both are real. Both belong to you.

Here's something that I think is different about where I was when I found what I'm going to tell you about.

I hadn't tried anything.

Not because I gave up. Because I never started. Four months postpartum, running on four hours of sleep, trying to keep a human being alive. Finding the right hair oil was not on my list.

I'd seen ads. Scrolled past castor oil, batana oil, postpartum serums more times than I could count. Bookmarked things. Never ordered.

Part of it was the money. But honestly?

Most of it was that I hadn't given myself permission yet.

When my friend from my mom group sent me something last week, she just texted me a link and said her sister used it, said 2 ingredients, read what they do, I almost didn't click.

Not because I was skeptical of the product. Because I was skeptical that I was allowed to want this.

I read it at 4am while feeding my daughter.

Here's what changed when I read it.

I finally understood what was actually happening to my hair, and why waiting alone wasn't going to fix it.

When your body goes through pregnancy and childbirth, it does something extraordinary. For nine months, your hormones keep most of your hairs in the growth phase. You actually shed less during pregnancy, which is why a lot of women feel like their hair is fuller and thicker when they're expecting.

Then after delivery, those hormones drop fast. And all the hairs that were being held in growth, they release at once. They enter what's called the telogen phase. The resting phase. They stop growing. They sit. And then, weeks later, they fall out all at the same time.

That's what's on the brush. That's what's in the shower drain. It's not damage. It's not disease. It's your body doing exactly what it's biologically programmed to do after birth.

But here's the part that nobody explained to me.

"It comes back" is only true if the conditions are right for it to come back.

Telogen hairs will eventually re-enter the growth phase, but that process depends on blood circulation to the follicle, on the follicle receiving the right signals, on the scalp environment being supportive of growth. If your scalp isn't getting what it needs during this window, those follicles can stay quiet longer than they should. The window for recovery exists, but it's not infinite.

Waiting is not the same as supporting.

And for Black women with 4A–4C hair, the scalp environment matters even more. Our hair texture means our scalp oils don't travel down the shaft the way they do for other hair types. We're naturally more prone to dryness at the scalp, which means follicles that are already in a resting state aren't getting the stimulation they need to wake up.

Waiting for it to come back by itself is like waiting for a plant to grow in soil that doesn't have water.

The link my friend sent me explained two ingredients. That's all it talked about. Not thirty. Two.

The first is Batana oil, the kernel oil of a palm called Elaeis oleifera that Indigenous communities in Central America have used for centuries. It's rich in specific fatty acids that are small enough to actually absorb into the scalp, not just sit on the surface of the strand. Most oils, especially the heavier ones we use on 4C hair, coat the shaft. They look good. They make the hair feel soft. But they don't reach the follicle.

Batana does. Its molecular structure is light enough to get through the cuticle and reach the scalp. That matters for follicles in telogen, because they need stimulation at the scalp level, not conditioning at the strand level.

The second ingredient is Rosemary oil.

In 2015, researchers published a clinical study comparing rosemary oil applied directly to the scalp against minoxidil, the prescription hair treatment. Six months. One hundred patients. Both groups had significantly more hair at the end. The difference between the groups was not statistically significant.

Rosemary oil performed the same as minoxidil. With significantly less scalp irritation.

The mechanism is specific. Rosemary stimulates blood circulation to the follicle, which is how dormant follicles get the signal to re-enter the growth phase. For postpartum telogen effluvium specifically, this matters: you don't need to create new follicles. You need to wake up the ones that went quiet. Rosemary oil, applied directly to the scalp, does exactly that.

The brand is called DENSÏA.

The bottle is 30ml. Amber glass. Clear oil inside, slightly herbal-scented. The ingredient list has two items: Elaeis oleifera kernel oil. Rosmarinus officinalis leaf oil. That is the complete formula.

No number seventeen. No fragrance. No menthol that burns. No ingredient I'd have to look up. Two things, and the reason behind each one explained clearly.

They have a 90-day guarantee. No conditions. No photos required. No minimum usage period before you can return it. If it doesn't do anything for you, you get your money back. You keep the bottle.

I read the guarantee twice because I was looking for the catch. There wasn't one.

I ordered it that night. My daughter was asleep on my chest while I did it.

I want to tell you what happened, and I want to be honest about how slow it felt at first.

The first two weeks: nothing visible. I was using it three nights a week, six to eight drops massaged into my edges and temples. I noticed my scalp felt different, less tight, less dry, but I didn't see anything.

Week three: I was getting my daughter ready for a bath and I happened to look at my reflection in the bathroom mirror at a certain angle. There was something soft at my left temple. Fine. Small. The kind of hair that is more texture than length.

Baby hairs.

I put my daughter in her bouncer and I went back to the mirror and I looked for a long time.

They were there.

I didn't tell my husband right away. I didn't want to say it out loud in case I was imagining it. I kept watching for another week. By week five, the baby hairs at both temples had filled in enough that when I pulled my hair back for the first time, just to see, I didn't need to angle my head away from the mirror.

I looked like myself.

Not completely. Not fully. But enough.

My husband noticed before I said anything. He asked if I'd done something different with my hair. I said yes. He said it looked good. He's not a man who says things like that spontaneously.

And then I found women who'd had the same experience. Because I needed to know I wasn't alone.

Latoya M., 31

★★★★★

"Postpartum shedding hit me at 3 months. By week 6 of using this, my stylist asked what I was doing different. First time anyone noticed my edges filling in instead of going."

Brianna C., 34

★★★★★

"I cried in the shower every wash day for 4 months. Three weeks in I went a whole wash day without crying. The shedding slowed down first, then the baby hairs came."

Jasmine K., 29

★★★★★

"I kept putting off buying something because I felt like I shouldn't be spending money on my hair with a newborn. The 90-day guarantee is what finally made me try it. My edges are coming back."

Danielle T., 36

★★★★★

"I was 8 months postpartum and convinced my hairline was permanently changed. Two ingredients, 3 nights a week. Week 8, baby hairs. My daughter won't stop touching them."

Before I tell you what to do with this, I want to address a few things that I know are in your head right now. Because they were in mine.

And one last thing. The most important thing.

Your body did something enormous. It grew a person. And in the process, your edges left.

You have the right to want them back.

— Maya

Maya Johnson is a writer and new mother based in Houston, Texas. She began writing for Crown Stories six months after the birth of her daughter. She is 32.