I have had my weave for 5 weeks and it was time for me to take it off, I missed my hair terribly – I love long term protective styles, but I get some anxiety when my hair is hidden for too long.

I got my timing so wrong during this whole process so I ended up rushing. I started taking off the weave by cutting the thread where it is sewn to my hair, I started this just after 8:30pm on a Sunday evening, needless to say, by the time I finished it was after midnight 🙁 – I was taking off the hair very carefully because I did not want to cut my own hair. The up-side is that when I undid the cornrows, my hair felt very moisturised which means that I took good care of it while it was under the weave. After I undid the cornrows, I slathered my hair with a mixture of generic castor oil and amla oil and did a bit of finger detangling – I didn’t to justice to the detangling because it was getting late and I needed to sleep. I put on a shower cap over my hair, covered that with a scarf and went to sleep.

My wash day in the morning went like this:

[1] Shampooed with the Body Shop Rainforest Shine Shampoo

[2] Instant conditioned while my hair was wet using the Body Shop Banana Conditioner – the plan was to put it on my hair and comb through using a wide-tooth comb, but for some reason this time around this conditioner was not working with me, my hair had zero slip, so I abandoned that idea and rinsed it off.

[3] I used a cotton t-shirt to dry my hair and then applied the Dabur Vatika Intensive Nourishment conditioner, I deep conditioned with heat for 15 minutes (I had limited time in the morning)

[4] I rinsed off the conditioner and t-shirt dried again for about 15 minutes, I then blew some cold air onto my hair just to get it drier so I could apply my leave-ins

[5] By this time I realised that my hair was a matted mess! This has happened before when I took down a long term protective style and it was not pretty then and it wasn’t this time as well. I worked in sections to de-mattify my hair, I applied the Beautiful Textures Tangle Taming Leave-In Conditioner and started with working through the ‘dreadlocks’ with my fingers and then using a wide tooth comb when all the knots were gone. This was a painful process which took me about 45 minutes. Honestly, I should have taken more time to detangle – I think I would have caused less damage. Lesson learnt! I then applied the MegaGrowth Profectiv Daily Leave-in Strengthner and sealed it all in with coconut oil and put my hair in a bun. I will keep my hair in a bun for the rest of the week.

I think the lessons learnt from this wash day are that

• I will not keep a protective style for longer than 4 weeks
• Always properly detangle before shampoo-ing my hair
• Always plan for enough time to do my hair

These seem so pretty simple – and it should be things I already know at this stage of my hair journey – but somehow at this wash day I seemed to forget it all. Anyway, I am half-way through my stretch (7 weeks post) and I need to start treating my hair with some TLC in the last 7 weeks so that I can see some length retention on my next relaxer day.