Relaxer #2 2016: Update

Helloooo! I am so ashamed that I did not write even one post, not one post in the month of August :-( So sad, I should have planned but life seems to be going too fast for me this year. I hope to be better for this blog and show more commitment for the last few months of the year! Hold me to this!

Moving on, my last relaxer day was nothing short of dramatic. I had planned to relax my hair over the weekend, but ended up having no time at all to do so. I had to take a day off from work to do my hair because I was travelling for a few weeks and I did not want to travel with 7 months of new growth... Sigh... Anyway, it finally happened and I relaxed my hair exactly 7 months after I last relaxed it.





The growth was nothing short of overwhelming. It took me about 2 hours to detangle alone, let alone relaxing my hair. 

I used the half-half method (relaxed each half separately, left to right), which made the process take even longer.

I followed my usual relaxer routine which you can find here, except for two things
(1.) I took 20 minutes to apply and smooth the relaxer onto my hair, 3-4 more minutes longer than I usually do.
(2.) I smoothed my hair once literally, as in I stroked my new growth only once with my hands, and then washed the relaxer off almost 2 minutes afterwards.

As a result of these two things, my hair was seriously under-processed. Some of the new growth was still the way it was before I relaxed my hair, which was a bit annoying. But I blame it on the relaxer, why?

I have since done a corrective relaxer, 4 weeks after relaxing my hair to retouch the areas that were not consistent with the rest of my hair. This time, I took 15 minutes because I was only applying the relaxer to the areas that were under-processed, so it took a much shorter time. I smoothed my hair a few times and kept the relaxer in for about 3 minutes after smoothing. Even after doing this corrective relaxer, my new growth remained pretty much the same as it was before I started. This is really a mind-baffling situation here, but I do not understand how my beloved Mizani relaxer has suddenly lost its touch. Maybe it expired... Anyone experienced something like this before?

Over to the thing I was most looking forward to: My length retention! I used Tressemme Hair Spray to blow-dry my hair (I did not use any other leave-in conditioner prior to blow-drying). I absolutely love this spray and how light-weight it is!

Here is a photo of my hair after blow-drying it:

Apologies for the poor photo quality, but this is what happens when you do your hair in the last minute :-( Worse is that I did't get a chance to do a proper length check, but from the photo above I can see that my hair has gained a lot of thickness.

A very rough estimate of my length retention for this stretch:

Compared to my last length check in December/ January, I think I have gained about 3 inches of length, despite the thin ends. I trimmed off about 2 inches (everything in between the two lines), so it looks like I have only retained 1 inch of length this year so far, lol. If my ends were in better shape, I would have touched bra-strap length. I actually don't mind that I didn't because thickness and health was always more important than length for me this year. This is the cost that I have paid for transitioning to a thicker texture, the finer hair texture has been gradually breaking off as I grow out the thicker hair texture. And off course you can imagine which texture is weaker between the two...

So the journey to bra-strap length continues. Who knows, I might just reach BSL this year, and at least I will reach that length with healthy-looking ends. 

I will give another hair update and a few more posts to come soon :-)

Have a lovely hair week!