Merry Christmas everyone! I know its probably strange to be blogging on Christmas but I am finally very rested and have time to myself so decided to just do it today. I hope your day was also filled with food, family and love 🙂
The past few weeks
I have not blogged for a while because of final exams. I started neglecting my hair by the end of thanksgiving week and mainly wore hats instead of scrunching to style. The neglect was not intentional but I am a completely different person when overwhelmed with school and honestly just did not have the energy to deal with my hair. I tried to protect it as best as I could without my usual weekly deep conditioning and found that simply fussing with it as little as possible while it was a little dry helped to prevent damage. I used a lot of moisturizer (maybe a little bigger than a quarter sized amount instead of a drop) and sealed with coconut oil whenever I actually slept home and not in the library.
After exams were over I was scared to explore the damage but luckily it was honestly fine. I guess three weeks was not enough to cause a setback and between avoiding combs and heat, protective styling and using extra moisturizer, my hair survived the mild abuse. I immediately got back on my regular schedule after my last exam on Dec 18. and it has been good sailing since.
Relaxer and Trim Update
Since I was not taking care of my scalp issues (eczema on scalp makes it very dry), to prep for my relaxer, I deep conditioned on Monday, paying particular attention to getting some on my scalp and also oiling it (natural oil of course) afterwards. I got my relaxer on Friday after being 8 weeks post. I had less new growth than last time which may be due to constantly forgetting to take my biotin over the past few weeks and the change in weather but I still had a lot and I wanted to do it in time for my birthday (today) so I went ahead. I generally use Affirm sensitive scalps but my salon ran out of Affirm and so I allowed her to use Revlon regular, which was previously my mainstay with great results. I know it is not the best idea to use different relaxers but I have done it before without any adverse effects plus she was booked up till Christmas and I really wanted it done before so making a new appointment was a no go. Since it was a regular relaxer, instead of mild, I only sat with it for about 2 minutes to retain a good amount of texture. I will keep monitoring it over the next few weeks to determine if the switch causes any obvious extra breakage but so far, I have not noticed anything.
After relaxing, I got my hair treated and then roller set. After taking the rollers down, she lightly blow dried, then trimmed about 1/4 of an inch. The last time I trimmed was in August so this is a real improvement since I used to trim after every relaxer (which was once every 6 weeks) because I hate when my ends are not perfectly blunt or cut in a style. Trimming is now mainly about keeping my hair healthy and aiming to retain as much length as possible so I will try to limit trimming to no more than 3 times for the year. Without much left to say, here are the results one day after leaving the salon:
