Greased Lightning

About a week ago I started noticing that I was having trouble getting my hair clean. I would wash it and it would still feel dirty. I attributed it to our hard water. I was thinking that, since we hadn't put salt in our water softener in a while, the water must have gotten really hard and wasn't washing all the shampoo and conditioner out of my hair, naturally making it feel greasy and dirty. I mean, it was really gross. It looked greasy and flat. It felt greasy and dirty. Even immediately after washing it. So I got salt and had my hubby put it in the softener. It didn't help. I washed my hair twice, scrubbing my scalp and the roots of my hair until my arms hurt, and then put conditioner only on the bottom of my hair, not on the roots at all. It didn't help. Two days ago I prompted him to put another bag of salt in. Still didn't help.

So I started to wonder if maybe the problem wasn't the water but my hair or my scalp. I have heard of women having things like postpartum acne or other skin issues. I experienced for myself the oh-so-common postpartum hair loss a few months after Miss was born. My hair is really thick right now because I haven't yet started to shed my pregnancy mane this time. So I started to wonder if maybe this was another weird thing that can happen after having a baby. I had never heard of postpartum grease-head before, but why not? So, naturally I turned to the internet to so some research.

(Notice the flat, greasy-looking hair. I did take a shower and washed the heck out of it!!)

Well, from what I have read online, it looks like my problem may very well be related to postpartum hormones and scalp changes. One mom put it this way on the Alphamom website:

I had the double whammy of my scalp deciding to go haywire around the exact same time [as her hair falling out]. . . starting around two or three months postpartum my scalp became RIDICULOUSLY oily. My hair would not come clean, product build-up galore, greased up like a 90s grunge rocker, etc. (italics added)

So what's a mom to do?? I talked to my mom about it last night. Though she had never heard of such a thing either, she suggested maybe trying to rinse with vinegar. So I did. It didn't work either. Though I will say that I didn't do a very good job of it. I kind of sloppily poured the vinegar over my head (which was coooold!!), when I think, in my case, I should have targeted its application a bit more. So I'm going to try again using a squirt bottle to get it down in my roots and onto my scalp a better. If that doesn't work I'm going to try vodka cut with a bit of water, which is another suggestion I found online. The mom quoted above eventually solved the problem by buying super cheap shampoo rather than her fancy salon stuff, but I already use super cheap shampoo! Anyone else ever have this problem or have any suggestions how to fix it?? I know it will eventually go away on its own (probably around the time my hair starts falling out in clumps) but I really don't want to wait that long. It's gross!