My Skin Had a Mental Breakdown

Okay, I'm gonna start this blog post off with a description of what my skin was like growing up. There is literally no other way to explain it than say, my skin was amazing. In high school, when the average teenagers were experiencing acne and breakouts, I just couldn't relate. I very rarely wore foundation and if I ever had a zit it probably came for a visit once a year. Past high school, then into college and then out of college, my skin stayed relatively the same (very rarely did I experience bad breakouts). My skin care routine was simple - I washed my face with a gentle cleanser every morning and every night. 

In the early stages of my pregnancy, everything was great and normal (with my skin I mean - the consistent morning sickness however, was not). In about September, when I was approximately 4 months pregnant, I noticed things were changing for my face. I had breakouts all over my cheeks and chin area. It sucked! And it stressed me the F out. I swear there were days where I'd do my make up, wash it off, then re apply it hoping I could hide the breakouts better. This went on for the rest of my pregnancy. So now, I wasn't only self conscious about having this big belly (which my friends would refer to as "it just looks like you ate a lot of pizza" belly) I was now self conscious of how my face looked. It made me so mad when people talked about pregnancy glow and how it's so wonderful - cuz I was over here like the f**k you talking bout pregnancy glow, I could basically play connect the dots on my face right now. 

Months later, I finally gave birth and I completely forgot about my face. I couldn't care less. I was way too busy swooning over this perfect like baby I created. It wasn't until about Weslie's 6 month Birthday that I started realizing my face was getting out of hand and I wasn't taking care of it. I was letting myself let go of myself (if that makes sense?). So once I realized that, I started talking to my friends and tried to see what kind of skin care routines worked for them. I would then realize that what works for someone else, might not work for me... and I learned the hard way because my whole face broke out in a crazy rash. And trust me, I PANICKED! I just didn't know what to do and I was even more embarrassed of my face now. So I took my crazy looking face to the doctor and told them what happened. He assumed it was an allergic reaction and told me to take some Benadryl. Now that might have helped the rash on my face but did not fix my wild breakouts. I was just about to book myself an appointment with a dermatologist but before I did i managed to figure out just exactly what was going wrong with my skin. My face was very dehydrated and wasn't absorbing any moisture that I put onto. This is gonna sound really strange, but I was seriously using too hot of water when washing my face and having way to hot of showers (seriously Evan thinks I'm the devil cuz I love my showers super super hot). I had basically ruined my moisture barrier which was massively drying out my skin. Not to mention, because I was so obsessed with fixing my face I was over washing it and over exfoliating.  So now that I've explained what I was doing wrong, I'm gonna list you the things that I'm currently doing RIGHT:

1. Only washing my face morning and night.
2. Start my face wash with warm water and finish with a splash of cold
3. Use a gentle foam cleanser OR Spectrogel if I'm having breakouts
4. Use a toner for cleaning face of dirt particles 
5.
 
3. Exfoliate once a week.
4. Use