The afro hair journey of a white mum

As one half of an inter-racial couple, knowing I was carrying a healthy baby, my thoughts were preoccupied by two things when pregnant with my first child. Married to a black African man, I wondered what skin and hair colour our daughter would have. What I didn't consider was what her hair texture would be like, how I would manage it, or the hours I would possibly need to spend taming it.

When Naima was born, she had a full head of beautiful dark curly hair which got thicker and curlier as time went on. As a small baby it was easy to look after with it being short but as she got bigger and her hair grew longer it became so curly that it would tangle quickly if left down. When wet, her locks would swish from side to side when she ran, looking longer with the curls defined however when dry it became static as one big mass, with the length shrinking by two thirds, leaving it looking dry.

Having european hair myself means I wash it anywhere between 2 and 4 days, wearing it either loose or piling it on top of my head. As it is curly/wavy I don't comb it between washes, nor do I straighten or blowdry it. The most time consuming method I practice on my long main which involves any kind of routine, is putting it in a pleat every night to stop it getting tuggy whilst sleeping. As I am not one to spend hours on my own hair, the concept of spending multiple hours a week on my child's hair was totally foreign to me.

As it became more difficult to manage, I would scour the internet looking for styles to emulate, which meant I learned a few different techniques to look after her afro hair. The hours spent styling, switching between 2 and 3 strand twists, braids and bantu knots was the easy part, what I found most difficult was the lack of regular routine I had with it and knowing how to best care for her hair in between styles.

Recently I began researching how to look after and maintain afro hair naturally. Before I delved deeper into hair styles, I started off with working out her hair type so I could look after it accordingly.

I discovered that hair comes in 4 catagories ranging from straight to kinky:

1 = Straight
2 = Wavy
3 = Curly
4 = Kinky

To determine how tight a curl is, it is lettered from A to C, with A being the loosest and C the tightest curl.

Doing this I discovered that Naima has type 4b/c hair, with the tightness of the curls varying on different sections of her head.

Here is a diagram to help show how I came to this conclusion. Remember, as type 1 hair is straight there is no classification of curl definition A, B or C for this type of hair.

This is how I started out on my journey to find a suitable regime for my daughters hair type and I will be blogging about my progress, looking at ways of washing, conditioning and styling her afro.