dready mamas!! QUICK before i have a dreadlock disaster!

[leaves]

hello all! i am dreading my hair, on my own [maybe not the smartest idea] and as i've finished the bottom half of my head, i'm realizing my hair is extremely thin. it used to be so thick before i had my son, i could barely wrap a hair tie around it three times. so, i'm wondering... is this is going to be a problem?

my question is, what number of dreads is a good number? and how thick should i be dreading them? the first couple are pretty thick, too thick i thought, so i started making them thinner. now they are way too thin. since these will be underneath, i don't really care, but i want the ones on top to look nice. but i'm thinking i'll be lucky if i can fit ten more on my head.

anyone familiar with dreading thin hair? any suggestions/tips/etc? ANYTHING will be GREATLY appreciated! :freaking out a little here:

[hadassah]

Hi! Way cool that you are dreading your hair! I would highly suggest sectioning out your hair......that way you can see how many to put in. Keep in mind that dreads SHRINK as they lock up......quite a bit sometimes. I sectioned mine before dreading and my sections were 1- 1 1/2 inch big sections and just about a year later the biggest ones are the size of a pencil.

[leaves]

thanks hadassah! i sectioned out my hair and it looks like i am only going to have 15 or so dreads. that just seems such a small number to me, and i'm afraid it's going to look weird. i've heard that your dreads will end up being the size of the section but i guess that's not true for all. i'm still a little nervous, but i keep reminding myself that hair is hair, and if doesn't work out then, well... :\

[MoonStarFalling]

The dread may not look like it's going to be that thick but it will eventually shrink up and in a year you'll notice they are twice as fat as when you started. So don't start out with hugely thick dreads. It's better to start with thinner ones and in a year you can combine them if you really want them fatter.

I've seen people, who say they have very thin hair, with as little as 12 dreads and it didn't look weird.