problems?

the mass of mess that i took a picture of are my locs. i don't know what the issue has been since i've had the baby (well having a baby could be the issue--i've been having a trillion other bodily problems since delivering ecobaby--my fourth baby) but my locs in the front have been seeminingly thinning and pushing themselves back from my hairline.

now the interesting part about this situation is if you look carefully in the picture you'll notice that the locs are thinning because all of the hair isn't catching in the locs. however, my hair is not thinning nor is it breaking off. the edges are just not growing with the rest of the hair to form a coil for my loc. when i retwist my hair, they look neat and get thick at the roots. but as the week progresses, they frizz up and "undo", leaving me with a loc that is much thinner at the root than the length of the lock, with literally a "puff" of hair that is standing up around the loc.

i've looked everywhere online and can't seem to find any real way to combat this issue. i have maintained my same hair regimine for the four years (well nearly four--wow time flies i know) that i've had my locs, but perhaps it's time to change it up. my hair could easily be changing due to a trillion things, including getting older (30 is the new 50 in this day and time) and having a baby. actually this issue honestly just started when i gave birth, so that's my best guess as to why this is happening. i've heard repeated stories from others i know say that locs grow in "stages"...and sometimes they grow thinly and a few months later start to thicken up. my mom's locs seem to be experiencing this phenomenon as each loc on her head seems to have areas of thickness followed by thinness, and then they thicken up again. it hasn't really affected her locs much--they're down her back.

i'm not too worried, mainly because this is only happening around the edges of my head. the middle is just fine (and way neater, might i add). my locs haven't grown much from the length they were here...as you can see, it wasn't even that long ago that i wrote it. so i can't really blame this phenomenon on my locs being much longer than they were before this problem started.

in the meantime, i'm going to rinse my locs way more (i do have a residual build up happening that i'm getting tired of looking at--you may even be able to see it in the picture) and twist them more gently. if there was a way that i could think of to somehow "tie" the puffs of hair back into the main loc...i'd be way happier. this DID happen about 2 years ago and i used individual sterling silver necklace links to secure the puffs to the loc by opening the link and then squeezing it closed around the root of my loc WITH the loose hair puffs. eventually the puffs loc'ed back into the dread and the silver links also got loc'ed in. it helped alot, although there was still flyaway hair around the locs. i did this with about 15 locs in the front of my head and now the silver links fall past my lips...they're almost to my jaw on the sides of my head...so my hair has really grown in 2 years. i am thinking of trying this process again...now i have to find some loose silver laying around.