Everything sounds good. The hair you see at 8 weeks is the hair that was dormant previously since hair grows in cycles.

thanks for your reply pdeco. how long is the best time to wait between treatments? the aesthetician told me to come back within 2 weeks of the new growth - this started happening at about week 5-6 so i stretched it out to week 8 when the growth was a bit more substantial.
am i right to assume, that if there is good shedding again now, that 2 'sets' of growth phases have been successfully treated and the period before i see substantial new growth should be longer?

8-12 weeks apart is a good time frame for underarms region. Yes, you're technically right, except that you don't really know how many hairs were in the right growth phase when you first started (if you had waxed before you started, it would be easier to judge for example since most hair showing at that point would have been in anagen phase). If the majority of your hair sheds and you don't need treatments more than 8-12 weeks apart, everything is going well and you should be done in 5-8 treatments with the majority of the hair gone after about 4.

thank you lagirl
i was just worried, as per my previous posts, that the settings might be too low and how would i ever know. but it seems like things are going okay so far then! and she did use higher settings this second treatment - hurt a lot more too!

i'm so glad i found this forum

If the settings were too low, you would either not shed most of the hair, or you would see most hair regrowing after 4-5 weeks. If you have a hairfree period, you're good.

You're welcome and don't worry too much