Oh man! So many questions, but such good ones!
We can help!
Welcome, btw. Lovely to see you here, dear.
Great start; no longer using conditioner and no longer combing! What I did (and it worked well, my dreads are about 2 months old and already very well defined) is I started washing my hair with plain Dove bar soap. You want to use something with as little oils in it as possible so that the soap can strip your hair of oils allowing your hair to have the correct texture to lock up tighter and faster. I also wear a wool dread tam or hat, which I sleep in to help my little hairs that haven't found their dread to pull themselves together using the static electricity from the wool.
As for sectioning, I found that my hair went into the locks that it wanted to be in without my help. I think that you should let your hair section itself, and after a while you'll want to go through and do some maintainance by pulling appart the sections that have gravitated that seem to be loose in between. believe me, you'll be much happier about how your hair looks and how your hair sits on your scalp if you try to let it go as natural as possible. Here's a pic of the back of my head right now so that you can see for yourself how naturally dreading has helped the back of my head stay tidy and comfortable.
Having let my locks piece out naturally, all of my locks are different sizes, but they're all the right size. I pulled some of mine appart at first, and now I'm having to combine them again, just because it didn't look right. Most likely they won't be super huge, so you really shouldn't worry.
I tried to leave my hair down as much as possible when I first started mine because the hair needs to be able to move in order to lock up. I suggest getting the dread tam if you'd like to hide your hair away for a little while, but it is ok to put it up in a pony tail if you need to every once in a while. Try not to wear it up too much because it may cause the dreaded uni-dread (or beaver tail) or start to wear a thin spot into your dreads (no bueno).
You should have baby dreads pretty early on because of your hair type. Curly hair dreads up nice, girl, especially natural. You don't need to twist and rip either, you should be able to just palm roll your locks once they start forming and they'll look real nice real soon.
I hope that I could help!
Good luck, mama. I'm sure they'll be gorgeous!
~Peace&Love~
jaimee
