My hair is really fine and in the 3.5 mths since it was backcombed its shrunk half its length - which is really shit cos the shortest layers of my hair were only 5-6 inches long I basically backcombed them in and have pretty much left it alone since, and the hair has just curled and wrapped itself up into tight little dready bundles. I was expecting some degree of shrinkage, but the speed its happened has been a little alarming. On the plus side, though, I have no undreaded ends left, and I think terminal shrinkage has just about been reached. Now it just needs to grow!!
I think it must depend a little on how you "made" your dreads. Mine were backcombed so tightly I reckon they were mostly pre-shrunk. If you're going natural or only backcombed/twisted&ripped loosely, it would figure that a lot more shrinkage would occur as the caught hairs continue to buckle up on themselves.
I soo don't want mine to shrink, I want them to get longggg!! I have thick coarse hair too but every single one of my dreads is looping like crazy and it looks like it will continue so I may have some major shrinkage-nooooo! I just wanna get a year over with >.< from the one picture I saw of hhb that he posted of his hair dreaded and the before shot his hair shrunk majorly and he had v. thick and coarse hair so who knows? Just have to wait and see I guess...
i have really thin straight hair, and havent had thattttt much shrinkage. theres a few that shrunk a lot but not many, maybe 3. most of my shrinkage was in diameter as well, went from sideshow bob to tight lil ropes. my hair was down to my nips, and now its about 2 or 3 inches above them.
Mine didnt really shrink much. Just formed a helmet of knotts on my head and then took forever to grow
funny gratefully dead didnt complain last night!!! hahaha., but ya, my hair shrunk almost half its length, but once it started to tighten up a bit, it grew back pretty fast, i think using salt water spray evryother day or so helped with the tightening part, and using healthier products for my hair helped it grow faster..
When I started my hair was at my waist and now it is at my shoulders. I don't have fine hair either. I have thick hair and lots of it.
so, the shrinkage has become more noticible since my last 2 washes.... which seems very odd to me, because my old dreads never shrunk this much, but yes, as of the last 2 10 days or so, i've lost some major length. some of my dreads are just this strange looking squiqqley clumps... i sometimes pull my dreads up into a "bun" of sorts, and i don't have enough length now to wrap it around.... they just "tuck" now.... also, have noticed some MAJOR tightening around the front and crown of my head, many many fewer stray hairs .... hope they don't all shrink too much more though!