Hair Nightmares from All Things Cute and Girly: Growing & Learning

This edition of Hair Nightmares is coming to you all from Chellsea at All Things Cute and Girly.

WARNING: You will see pictures of my daughter’s head looking a hot mess due to me not knowing ANYTHING about caring for curly hair. I am embarrassed and ashamed! But I am pleased to show how much of a difference hair blogs have helped changed our life! Sorry for the quality of the photos..its all from my phone.

My hair nightmare with my daughter began once it changed in texture and started to grow. As a baby, she had straight hair and I thought wow, this will be easy! When I was pregnant I always wondered how my daughter’s hair would turn out with her being Filipino and African American.
Here are some photos her hair growing:

I always felt like her hair “grew up” and not down..I didn’t know what to do! It was always so knotted and tangled that I would dread trying to brush it out. I didn’t know anything about hair, let alone hair that was different from mine! It all began when she was around six or seven months when her hair started growing. I had no knowledge of how to care or style her hair at all. I was told from different people to “use baby oil”, “don’t use baby oil”, “don’t use water”, “grease her hair” ..on and on and on. I didn’t know what to do! It seemed like every product I put into her hair would soak up and leave it drier than it was before. Most products I used contained mineral oil and petroleum/petrolatum. Her hair would feel so coarse and
knotted and I felt like it never grew. Her only style was pretty much a ponytail slapped on top of her head.
These are her famous hair dos back then:

I would just put them into a ponytail on top of her head. I also believe one of the photos shows how much tension was put onto the hair always being in ponytails for a long period of time which caused breakage. Eventually, I became really frustrated and last year around August when my daughter was 19m, I decided to look online for anything having to do with “mixed/biracial haircare, hair style, products etc”. I honestly don’t remember what I typed into Google but up came Happy Girl Hair! I was so obsessed with the site. I browsed the blog for hours looking at all the great information and hairstyles. I learned about all the no-no ingredients like mineral oil and petroleum (like I had been using!) a few hair products to try, the basic hair products I needed to begin with and hairstyle ideas.Now, just because I saw all these hairstyles it didn’t mean I knew how to do them right away. I had no idea how to cornrow AT ALL here’s a few examples to show you how horrible I was:

 
Do you have any “hair nightmares” you would like advice, information or tips on? Would you like to share your story in hopes of reaching out and inspiring others? Contact me using the form on the contact page.