Washing My Hair With Baking Soda: Fail...(though I did find another solution)

My hair has been changing since I began having children.  I went from 'perfectly' straight, hair model type hair (those were words of my friends in the past, not my own), to this weird mushroom shaped head that was sometimes kind of wavy and sometimes straight but never really one or the other.  It began to tangle easily and just wasn't the same as it used to be: as in, before I could go days without combing or brushing my hair and no one noticed (my roommate finally noticed and commented on this several months after we had been living together in college one year).  I could literally roll out of bed most days, place my hair in a part and walk out the door as long as it was clean.  Or, I could just literally 'wash and wear' with no ill effects. Sometimes girls would even ask me what I did to straighten it, and I would tell them..."Uh, nothing...this is just how it is I guess."  I didn't realize how 'blessed' I was with easy to care for hair.

Needless to say, when my hair began to change, I sort of freaked out.  If you know me, you know I'm not a vain person by any means, but I have always been a bit protective of my locks.  For a few years, I basically just lived with it and used heat to straighten my hair in various ways, though it was never the same as it had been when I was younger.  It was frustrating, but what could I do?  I was clueless....

...Until a few years into this frustrating new hair when I ran into a few blog posts such as this one about washing your hair with baking soda.  Basically, what I read promised that if I'd just give it a couple of solid months, my hair would become more manageable and less frustrating.  I would stop stripping my hair of it's natural oils and it would be restored to it's normal, healthy state if I would just treat it well and stop using shampoo.

So I decided to give it a good solid shot and committed to the baking soda method for 8 weeks.  In the beginning, I loved it.  In fact, after the first use, my husband even commented on how different my hair looked; it obviously wasn't being weighed down by artificial moisturizers any longer.  Then, I got to the weird stage where the scalp makes too much oil for a while and you just have this weird greasy crown some days.  I kept at it, because every thing I had read  promised this would happen.  In the end, though, the oils would balance out and my hair was supposed to be healthier and happier, for the long run.

Well, I'm not sure what happened, but it just didn't go that way for me in the end.  I did get over the funky greasy stage, but then my hair just got incredibly dry and even more unmanageable.  When I would try to condition it, the conditioner would stick to my hair and make it look like I hadn't washed it in a week or two. I used multiple kinds of conditioners - some 'natural' and some not (w/o supposed 'bad' oils and chemicals for curly girls), but nothing seemed to help.  If I used any conditioning at all, I looked greasy again, but if I didn't I was overly dry.  While it was no longer being weighed down by anything artificial, it also didn't shine or look healthy, though at least it didn't look dirty. In short, it just felt weird.

All that to say, I stuck it out, but I just couldn't live with the baking soda wash long term.  I have read of a variety of methods (so it's quite possible that I just didn't choose the right one), but that's okay with me for now.  Those several weeks of experimentation were enough for me, and for now I've settled on a new solution from The Curly Girl Handbook.

What was supposed to be this short update is now taking up a lot of space so I'll spare the details and come back to this story another time.  I will close in saying how thankful I am for the aforementioned book though - it literally gave me all the answers that NO ONE had been able to for about 4 years.  Suffice it to say, I highly recommend it as a reference for anyone whose hair has the slightest wave or curl pattern.  You won't regret it (and I promise to tell you more later).