Ilah's Hair Care

Last week I received an email from a reader who asked, "What are you putting on your daughters hair? I have been trying to find out what to put on my daughters hair and have been unsuccessful in finding something. I love how defined your daughter's curls are! Thank you in advance :)"

I thought I would do a post on this in case there are other mothers who read my blog that may also be curious, as you might have a child that has hair texture that is similar to Ilah's.

When Ilah was born her hair was pretty straight and silky. I didn't expect it to stay this way because as with most babies, hair texture changes over the months that follow. I was curious to see what Ilah's hair would be like - curious in the sense of wondering if she would take on more of my hair type, or her fathers. Her hair stayed straight and silky for the first two months....

Around two months old, Ilah hair became more wavy and a bit thicker, but I could still put a comb right through it with ease....

When Ilah was around 4 months old, I started to notice that the texture of her hair was beginning to change.....

It was around this time that I did away with Johnson and Johnson Shampoo and ordered organic hair care products for Ilah, from the line It's a Curl {for ethnic women, girls, and babies}.
I bought their Shampoo, Conditioner, Moisturizer, and Leave-In Cream. I thought they all worked pretty well on Ilah's hair. The shampoo and conditioner are tearless, smell good, and they last soooo long, even though the bottles aren't very large. A little goes a long way. I went through the moisturizer and the leave-in cream pretty quickly though because I was using a good amount of it every day.

Ilah eventually outgrew the baby line and I stopped using It's a Curl products, mostly because I was having to order them online and that started to get inconvienent. They are also a bit pricey as well, if you compare them to what you can just go and get off of the store shelf, but I loved the organic ingredients and as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. It's a Curl also has a Kids Line, which I have yet to try. But when Ilah was around 4 months to 11 months, I would use the leave-in cream and moisturizer on her hair. And while although I didn't know if it was actually doing anything, my mom emphasized that good hair care early on was important and so I felt that putting something in her hair was better than putting nothing in it at all....and what I was putting in it had great reviews.




Ilah's hair started to get longer and as evidenced in the photo above, it "expanded". Ha! I would just put the moisurizer or leave-in cream in her hair, rub her hair between my fingers to make sure it got in real good, move sections around with my fingers and that was that.

When I finished up the last of the It's a Curl bottles of moisturizer and leave-in cream, I went on to try a new product {Anti-breakage, detangling oil moisturizer} by African Pride, that is sold at a local Sally's Beauty Supply store. I used it on Ilah's hair for only a short time...I hated it.
But while I was trying out the "new stuff", I started playing around with Ilah's hair one morning. After I put some moisturizer cream in it, I slightly brushed it out, then took pieces of her hair and wrapped them around my index finger. This was the end result....
I took that photo on my phone on December 10th of last year, when Ilah was 11 months old. I thought that all of the little formed curls were so cute! Although it can be a tad bit time consuming to do her hair this way {it's just 15 min, but it's time consuming when you just want to get out of the door!}, it's darling and it locks in the moisturing cream. So I continued to do Ilah's hair this way.....





I did away with the African Pride hair product a few months after buying it {it was just too greasy in texture, Ilah's hair quickly obsorbed it, and it wasn't helping the back parts of her hair to grow in} so I moved on to two recommendations that were given to my mom by one of her friends, who has a grand-daughter that is bi-racial and close in age to Ilah....

You can buy both of the products above at Walmart, which was a total surprise to me. I have been using them for approximately the last five months and really like both of them and how Ilah's hair looks and feels with these products in it. So along with my method of curling individual pieces of her hair around my finger after I've put the above hair care products in it, this is how I get Ilah's hair to look like this....

My friend Vanessa did a post on her blog a few weeks ago on this same subject. Although her daughter has a different hair texture, hair care is very important to her as her daughter is bi-racial and like me, Vanessa was a curly haired girl too! You can go here to read her "curly hair post" which is full of great resources : )

I hope this post was informative for all of the mommy's out there who have a multi-racial child, or children, and have been wondering how I get Ilah's hair how it looks. And for those who don't...I hope all the pictures of Ilah took you down memory lane when she was just a wee one and that you enjoyed seeing them!