Relaxer Update

• I retouched at 24 weeks post relaxer (6 months) and I made a decision to texlax. I did this because I have a small cute head *winks* and retouching my hair bone straight makes it look even smaller. I've always wanted full hair so I decided to try a texlax and it worked for me. I first read about texlaxing here and here on Rehairducation by Lade.
• Prior to my hair journey, I used Dark and lovely Beautiful Beginnings hair relaxer (for kids) because I have very soft hair even with new growth.
• When I first texlaxed, I had to trim off a lot of weak ends and so my hair had different lengths all over. I did the touch up myself and it looked like it went well until I started having crazy shedding a week later. I learnt about tea rinses and this helped reduce the shedding.

• I washed my hair last week to prepare myself for this touch up. Contrary to the belief that out hair has to be dirty before retouching, your hair should be washed at least a week or 2 weeks before retouching.
• Parted my hair into 4 sections, detangled and combed to avoid matting, applied olive oil to all of my hair including my new growth and then made one inch twists in each section. This helps me apply my relaxer and smoothen it effectively.
• I used Olive oil No lye relaxer extra strength because I've heard nice comments about it by other hair bloggers. This is my first time using an adult relaxer (I’m growing up innit?). By the way, I found it was extra strength after I’d finished relaxing. LMAO!

• I used the half and half method which involves relaxing your hair one half at a time. Starting from the middle, mixed and applied relaxer to only the new growth on each twist. Application and smoothing took 15 minutes. Moving forward, I may find another method to relax my hair because I can’t get my plastic caps to stay on without allowing water enter the other half of my hair. You can watch how to self-relax here Just grow already.
• Rinsed the relaxer after leaving it on for 5 minutes and neutralized 3 times with the Ors Creamy Aloe Shampoo that came in the kit.

                                        

• Repeated the application and smoothing process to the front half. After relaxing the front half, I neutralized the whole hair again 2 times to remove any traces of relaxer. This is very very important.
• Did a mid-step protein treatment with Aphogee Keratin 2 minute Reconstructor for 5 minutes. Applied this to my whole hair using medium heat. I bought the sachet in the picture above for N300 in Wuse market. I was so happy because I've wanted to buy this for a very long time.
• Deep conditioned with Motions Moisture plus conditioner for 45 minutes using my heat cap.
• Rinsed and air dried till 80%. Applied leave ins (Elasta Qp olive oil and mango butter and Mega Profective leave-in strengthener) and allowed to air dry completely.
• Applied heat protectant; Olive oil smoother and polisher serum and did a length check. Here are the results;

• I learnt relaxing your hair yourself allows you to be in control of what you want. I washed off my relaxer when I wanted to and I definitely did it better than my first time. Cheers to me.
• I watched a video by Jen of Just Grow Already on how to self-relax and even though I watched it the last time, I was able to understand it better and apply the processes.
• I still have to work on keeping my plastic caps in place when relaxing. The caps came off when washing off the relaxer from my back half and made my front half really wet. This happened the last time but will not happen again.
• I did my mid –step protein treatment after neutralizing not before. I wondered if doing this was wrong because most hair bloggers do their treatment before neutralizing.
• I may not stretch as long as I did again because my hair didn't seem to like this stretch at all and it kept getting more difficult to maintain as the stretched increased. I may start relaxing at 4 months post relaxer but let’s see how it goes.
• I tried using a hair sprush which I got from Grand Square, Abuja but I discontinued after seeing strands of my hair on the sprush. I’d have to learn how to use one or just do the plain old style using the hair gloves.