Dying For A Change: Hair Color and Your Pregnancy

• For red highlights or to enhance red hair: ½ cup of beet juice mixed with ½ cup of carrot juice. Mix together, pour on damp hair, and let sit for one hour before washing out. If you spend that hour sitting in direct sunlight, the effects will be even more dramatic.
• For blonde highlights mix 1 cup of lemon juice with 3 cups of chamomile tea that has been brewed, cooled, and strained. Pour over damp hair and let sit for one hour - again sunlight will enhance the properties of the color. Wash out and follow with a conditioner. For significant blonde color use daily for up to three weeks.
• For brunette hair prepare strong black coffee or tea. After washing hair, pour the mixture through hair 15 times, re-rinsing using the same liquid. ( You can do this by placing a large pasta or soup pot in the sink to catch the rinse, then pour into a large jar for the next rinse). On the final rinse through, leave on hair for 15 minutes, then rinse with clear water.

A word about perming and straightening your pregnant hair

While there is little in the way of scientific information on the safety of perming or relaxing your hair during pregnancy, perhaps the most convincing evidence against the their use comes directly from hairdressers. Most say that because pregnancy hormones frequently interfere with, or even change, the way your hair reacts to perm or relaxing solutions, you could easily end up with a look that is quite opposite of what you expected. Hair can get frizzy or straight instead of curly, or kinky and frizzy instead of straight. So forgo the perm or straightening for now - and opt for a style that's easy to manage without the extra chemical treatments.

Learn More About Safe Choices for Your Baby• Things You Can and Can't (or Shouldn't) Do During Pregnancy
• Retinol and Hyaluronic Acid in Beauty Products
• Ten Tips for Avoiding Excess Pregnancy Weight Gain

Colette Bouchez is an award winning medical journalist with more than twenty years experience. She is the former medical writer for the New York Daily News, and the top selling author of The V Zone, co-author of Getting Pregnant and upcoming book, Your Perfectly Pampered Pregnancy. Currently a daily medical correspondent for HealthDay News Service/The New York Times Syndicate, and WebMD, her popular consumer health articles appear daily online, as well as in newspapers nationwide and in Europe and Japan. She is a regular contributor to USAToday.com, ABCNews.com, MSNBC.com and more than two dozen radio and television news stations nationwide. She lives in New York City.

Excerpted from Your Perfectly Pampered Pregnancy

Copyright © Colette Bouchez. Permission to republish granted to Pregnancy.org, LLC.