HEALTH · POSTPARTUM RECOVERY

10 Reasons Mothers Who Finally Stopped Shedding Say Nobody Ever Tested The Right Number

By Hannah Reid  |  Last updated July 2026  |  6 min read

If you are four, eight, or even fourteen months postpartum and still finding your hair in the drain — and every doctor you have asked has told you your bloodwork came back normal — this may be uncomfortable reading.

Because they were probably right. And they still missed it.

Postpartum shedding affects somewhere between 40 and 50% of new mothers, and almost every article you will find blames hormones and tells you to wait it out. That advice is fine for the first four months. After that it quietly becomes wrong — and the women it fails spend a year buying serums, biotin gummies and rosemary oils for a problem that was never on their scalp.

1. It stopped being hormones months ago

During pregnancy high oestrogen holds your hair in its growth phase, so you shed almost nothing. After birth that hair lets go at once. That wave peaks around two to four months and settles by about six.

So if you are at month eight, ten or fourteen and it has not stopped, you are no longer looking at a hormonal shed. You are looking at something that never got corrected.

2. They tested the wrong number

A standard blood count measures haemoglobin — the iron circulating in your blood right now.

It does not measure ferritin — your stored iron. The reserve tank. Ferritin is not included in a routine panel. You have to ask for it by name.

This is why so many women are told they are fine while losing hair by the handful. Circulating iron normal. Reserves empty. Lab normal often starts as low as 15. Symptoms typically begin below 30, and recovery generally needs 50 or more.

3. Your body made a choice — and it chose your blood

When iron runs short your body does not share what is left evenly. It triages.

Blood is life-critical. Hair is not. So your body strips iron from your hair follicles — metabolically expensive tissue — to keep your blood counts looking perfect.

The very thing keeping your bloodwork normal is the thing taking your hair. Your body did not lose it. It gave it up, to protect you.

4. Every culture on earth used to prevent this

For over a thousand years cultures that had never met arrived at the same conclusion: birth costs a woman her blood, and she must be refilled before she returns to the world.

China called it zuo yuezi, sitting the month. Korea recorded seaweed soup for new mothers in royal documents dating to 918 AD. Mexico calls it la cuarentena, the quarantine. India, jaapa.

Four continents. A thousand years apart. No contact. And every one landed on forty days of rest and blood-building food. Chinese medicine named the practice bu xue — to replenish the blood.

Modern maternity care sends you home in 48 hours with a leaflet and a car seat.

5. The four factors hiding in liver

Whatever the culture, the food was almost always the same: liver, blood soup, bone broth, seaweed.

They never knew why it worked. We do now. Liver is the only food carrying all four blood-rebuilding factors at once:

• Iron — the raw material
• B12 and folate — they build the red blood cells your iron travels in
• Copper — which releases stored iron so your body can use it

That combination is why liver worked and spinach did not.

6. Copper is why the iron you already took did nothing

This is the one almost nobody knows, and it explains a lot of wasted months.

Iron on its own gets stuck. Copper is what mobilises stored iron out of the tank and into your bloodstream. Without enough of it you can swallow iron daily and watch your ferritin barely move.

If you have supplemented for months and your number crept up two or three points, this is very often why.

7. It will not back you up

The iron most women are prescribed is ferrous sulfate. It causes stomach problems in a large share of people who take it, and roughly one in four stop taking it altogether.

Consider who is being asked to tolerate that: a woman who has just given birth and is already dreading her digestion. That is not a willpower failure. It is a formulation failure.

Chelated iron bisglycinate is bound to an amino acid, so your body handles it more like protein than metal — roughly twice the absorption, far fewer people quitting. You did not fail iron. Iron failed you.

8. Your prenatal and your coffee have been cancelling your dose

Calcium. Most prenatals contain iron and calcium in the same capsule. Calcium blocks iron absorption. Your good-mum vitamin has been fighting itself twice a day for months.

Coffee. Polyphenols in coffee and tea significantly inhibit iron absorption. So you drink four cups to survive the exhaustion — and block the exact thing that would fix it.

Timing alone changes how much of your dose you keep.

9. Safe while breastfeeding — unlike the only drug that is proven

Minoxidil is the most clinically proven hair-loss treatment available. It is also generally advised against while nursing.

So the women experiencing the most dramatic hair loss of their lives are locked out of the one thing with the strongest evidence, and pushed toward scalp oils instead.

Which is the uncomfortable truth about that entire aisle: you cannot fix from the outside what is missing on the inside. A serum cannot put iron back into your blood.

10. Ninety days, or your money back

Iron stores rebuild over months, not weeks. One bottle is one month — long enough to feel your energy change, not long enough to change your hair. Three months is the minimum that moves the number.

So the protocol is built that way, and guaranteed that way. Use the first bottle, all of it. If your energy has not shifted and your shower has not changed, you get your money back, opened bottles included.

The complete protocol also includes free Vitamin C Drops and a scalp massager, because iron without vitamin C is half a dose.

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What mothers are saying

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If you have read this far

You probably recognised yourself somewhere around reason two or three.

The single most useful thing you can do today costs nothing: ask your doctor for a ferritin test, by name. Not a full blood count. Not iron. Ferritin. If it comes back under 30 you finally have your answer, and it was never your fault.

And if you would rather just start refilling what birth took — that is what Reborne is. The four factors that were in the liver every culture on earth fed new mothers, in a form your body can actually absorb.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Always speak to your healthcare provider about supplementation, particularly while pregnant or breastfeeding.