Pregnancy hormones can trigger sudden hair growth that was never visible before. While this is normal, it can become annoying for women who wish to maintain an effective grooming routine.
CoLaz advises pregnant women to opt for temporary solutions like shaving, waxing or plucking until after giving birth and hormone levels have returned to normal.
Hormonal Changes
Pregnancy changes the body in many ways: weight gain, loss of bladder control and an abundance of hair growth that’s difficult to reach with conventional means like combing, razor shaving or depilatory creams.
Women may be tempted to opt for laser hair removal as an alternative treatment option, since it’s permanent and could save them the hassle and time-consuming nature of shaving or waxing. But before making such decisions, a good rule of thumb would be waiting until after giving birth before starting this form of therapy – to give time for hormones that impact hair growth to stabilize.
Hormonal fluctuations during pregnancy also increase the likelihood of negative side effects from laser hair removal treatments, including burned skin and hyperpigmentation. Hormones alter how pigmented your skin is, making it more challenging for lasers to distinguish between hair follicles and skin. It’s an unnecessary risk when there are safer options available like electrolysis and thread thinning.
One potential drawback of laser treatments during pregnancy is how weight gain may make skin more sensitive to heat from lasers, leading to more painful treatments than usual. Furthermore, getting laser treatments near areas where you might undergo cesarean sections could irritate incisions and delay healing time if that procedure becomes necessary.
Hair removal methods like shaving or waxing should only be performed postpartum and only then by experienced estheticians who understand hormone changes and treatments’ safety requirements. Choosing an experienced esthetician ensures both safety and effectiveness during treatments.
Skin Sensitivity
Pregnancy forces your body to go through changes that are often surprising and unexpected, from weight gain and bladder control loss to unexpected hair growth in unexpected places due to hormonal shifts and unexplained by medical treatments like laser hair removal; many women turn to laser treatment before and during pregnancy due to its risks such as increased sensitivity or skin burns, however.
Laser hair removal involves having a doctor or technician direct a beam of light at the area you wish to treat, targeting each individual hair with laser light, which targets its dark pigment and destroys its follicle. Unfortunately, it also heats your skin which may lead to some discomfort during treatment – hormone changes in pregnancy can amplify these sensations further.
Increased skin sensitivity makes it harder for any irritations caused by laser heat energy to heal naturally, potentially leading to further permanent damage from laser treatment. Furthermore, your immune system is already busy supporting the wellbeing of your baby – so any painful or uncomfortable treatments could wreak more havoc than usual.
While pregnant, you should avoid shaving your chest and nipples as their skin is more delicate. Once giving birth has occurred and hormone levels have settled back down again, laser hair removal treatments on these areas should resume safely.
If you’re desperate to eliminate hair growth during your pregnancy, traditional methods such as shaving and waxing might be more suitable than using depilatory creams unless approved by your physician. Due to limited research on laser hair removal during gestation, it would be prudent to delay all cosmetic treatments (including chemical peels and microneedling ) until after giving birth if at all possible.
Contraindications
Pregnancy often brings with it unwanted physical changes, including unexpected hair growth in unexpected places. This can be especially frustrating for women who relied on waxing and shaving as their primary methods for hair removal in the past. Unfortunately, no studies exist proving laser hair removal as safe for pregnant women; therefore it is recommended to wait to book sessions until after delivery has taken place.
One reason you should wait to undergo laser hair removal treatments during pregnancy is that hormone levels fluctuate throughout the nine-month gestation, causing your skin to react more sensitively than usual during the procedure and make it uncomfortable or even painful. Furthermore, any burns sustained while pregnant will take longer to heal and are more prone to hyperpigmentation than usual.
Your skin can change during pregnancy, making it more difficult for a technician to see the hair follicles under your skin and perform effective treatments that may not yield the results you were hoping for.
Pregnancy-related increased blood flow can have an adverse impact on skin sensitivity. This may impede laser hair removal treatments as darker and thicker hair grows back over time, making removal harder to achieve.
Depilatory creams should also be avoided during gestation as these contain chemicals like thioglycolic acid and barium sulphide that have been known to cause side effects for pregnant women such as painful skin reactions. Furthermore, an electrical current passing through depilatory creams that destroy hair follicles may enter your amniotic fluid and potentially harm your baby.
As you can see, there are numerous reasons to avoid laser hair removal while pregnant. Instead, shaving, waxing and plucking should suffice until after delivery has taken place. Remember that postpartum care is an ongoing process so check in regularly with your physician about all of the ways your body has changed post-delivery – they’ll help determine when hormone levels have returned to normal so laser hair removal may resume safely.
Safety
While laser hair removal poses no direct threat to an unborn baby, it is prudent to delay treatment until after pregnancy has concluded. Once hormone levels return to normal after giving birth, laser treatments should resume without issue.
Avoid laser treatments during pregnancy as they can cause swollen, irritated skin – something which should never happen during this stage. “Swollen skin can worsen skin color and hair growth, making it more challenging to achieve the desired results,” Hack notes. Additionally, sensitive and itchy skin due to hormones or stretch marks could result in greater discomfort during sessions.
Depilatory creams should also be avoided during pregnancy due to chemicals like thioglycolic acid and barium sulphide that could potentially harm fetuses. Therefore, alternative hair removal techniques like shaving, waxing and tweezing may be more suitable until after giving birth.
When planning for a cesarean section nearing its due date, it’s essential to avoid shaving the area right above your bump, known as the pubic area. Shaving could irritate hair follicles in this region and increase risk of infection as well as delay healing time.
Electrolysis should never be performed during pregnancy as experts believe its use could harm both mother and fetus due to amniotic fluid being an electrical conductor.
At pregnancy, there are safer and more effective alternatives to shaving or waxing to remove unwanted hair from your face and body. Furthermore, waiting until post-partum to start waxing or shaving could prove wise since your body will experience something called “telogen effluvium”, in which any additional hair that grew during gestation suddenly falls out – this process is completely normal but may prove frustrating if you wanted a hairfree bod during gestation.
