LICE!

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Lice Page 2

OK, now for what I had to do...

First, go totally bizerk. Get it out of your system. Cringe at the thought of bugs in the hair. Pay close attention to how your head feels. Feel some in there? Even if you don't have them you'll itch and you'll feel like you've got a million of them in there. Make sure you whine a while about how this sucks.

Feel better? Didn't think so.

Next, you MUST get a lice comb, a metal lice comb. Metal. Not plastic. Metal. Metal with teeth that are close together.

And some cream rinse. Yes, cream rinse, that stuff people use in their hair after they shampoo - you'll find out why in a little bit. I went to the store and got the cheapest brand I could, I got 2 bottles for each kid (they have long hair and I wanted to make sure I didn't run out).

Don't forget the METAL lice comb.

Notice I didn't mention buying any chemicals? Good, don't buy any nasty, poisonous products because you don't need them.

The first time we had lice I put my kids in the tub just so that the lice would fall in a contained area. I was too freaked out at the thought of these bugs and was afraid of them to be honest. The other times I was more rational and just had the kids stand with their heads leaning over the tub or the bathroom sink.

Now, what you need to do is open up the bottle of cream rinse, part your childs hair and put cream rinse down the part. Now rub in the cream rinse. Make another little part in the hair, put the cream rinse down the part and rub it in. Depending on how thick the hair is it can take a while to do this. You MUST part the hair into very small sections so that you get all the hair completely covered in cream rinse. Gob that stuff on.

Now you are probably wondering why you are putting nice smelling cream rinse into your childs hair instead of putting a poisonous chemical into their hair. Cream rinse is good for your hair so how could it be lethal to a little louse? Well, first off, the lice can't crawl away because they are stuck in the cream rinse. Think about how thick that stuff is. This is good, that means you don't have to chase the lice around your childs head trying to grab it before it gets away. This means that all you have to do is comb the little suckers out of your childs head! COOL!

So, that said, it's now time to comb your childs hair with the METAL lice comb. With each swipe look at the comb. If any lice are stuck in the gobs of cream rinse on the comb all you need to do is rinse off the comb and they slid right off and go down the drain. You can use warm water, no need to use scalding hot water. Comb from your childs scalp to the end of their hair. You may need to work in small sections depending upon how thick and/or long your childs hair is. If your child has lice you will find them this way. If your child does not have lice the worst that will happen is that they will have nice, silky, smooth hair.

Now, everyone go "ooooo" and "wow" and "ewwwwww!" as you gawk at the lice. Rinse a few off and let them frantically run about in the sink. REALLY look at them. As common as they are, you hopefully won't see them too often. Show the kids the legs and all. Tell them about the thorax. Now, just for fun, put a piece of hair in the sink so the lice and crawl on it. Notice how fast they are! You will be amazed.

Oh, and take some pictures! And send them to me!

Continue combing through the hair from scalp to end. This gets the adult lice out and the nymphs as well. Normally the nit comb, no matter what it says, will NOT remove the nits (lice eggs) and nymphs (baby lice). They are too small for the comb. But, when combined with the cream rinse the nymphs will be trapped and you will be able to pull them out with the comb. The nits are another matter.

Fact number one: A nit comb will not remove the nits. It just doesn't. So, because of that I often call a nit comb a lice comb.

Fact number two (we'll just get this out of the way): [commercial lice killers] probably will not kill the lice and their eggs. They may kill most of the lice but not always all of them and don't kill the nits. So, after a week or so the nits will hatch and your childs head will be the happy home of a new batch of lice.

How's your own head feeling? Is your own head feeling really buggy yet? Even if you don't have any lice yourself you will feel like you've got the mother load of a colony up there. It's amazing. Even as I type this I find myself itching! Yu-u-u-u-uck! After you've done a cream rinse combing and you are satisfied you have removed all the lice you can then you need to rinse off your childs hair like you normally would and dry their hair off or put their hair up in a towel. Remember not to share towels. And don't share combs or brushes. Everyone should have their own from now on forever and ever amen.

Now, make sure you do one kid at a time from this point on to make sure they are done correctly.

Do each kids head as above. It is possible some lice are still in their hair up to this point but you should have gotten most of them out with the cream rinse combing. This is why you should do this EVERY DAY, twice a day if possible (especially for the first few days) for at least 2 weeks. Each time you comb through their hair you will pull some lice out. Now, don't forget, you will also be pulling out any lice that have hatched between cream rinse combings. That is the reason for doing this every day - to remove any lice that have hatched. If you are truly careful you can have all the bugs and nits out of your childs hair within 3 days or so. But I'd still do the cream rinse combing daily "just in case" so that if a nit somehow missed your tired, crampy fingers you won't have to worry about a new infestation. Being overly cautious when it comes to lice is a good thing.

Next you will have to nit pick. Yes, I know, ICK! But you will have to do this in order to remove the nits so you can take your child back to school sooner. If you don't nit pick you MUST cream rinse once to twice a day for at least 2 weeks (that is the amount of time it will take all the nits to hatch and for you to remove the darling new hatchlings [called nymphs]) but you must remember that even hatched nit casings will still be stuck to the hair shaft and it will take a while for them to fall off (I don't know how long exactly but I do know it's longer than 2 weeks!). Not nit picking would be fine in the summer when they don't have to go back to school and you aren't fighting a "no nit" policy but you can't have your child missing more than 2 weeks of school. As it is they will be missing at least a few days while you do battle with the lice. Removing all the nits is nearly impossible at a first sitting, you'd be amazed at how many you will find each day of searching.

Next thing I did with my oldest daughter who has long long hair was, I divided her hair into about 9 sections. I then went through each section minutely (by this I mean, I went through it pretty much strand by tedious strand from root to end), start at the top of the head so that if anything falls out of the hair it will fall into hair that you did not check yet. Look for anything that is not hair. There should not be anything left on that scalp except intact skin and hair. If the kid has dandruff you'll be going through the hair for quite a while. My daughter had dandruff. UGH. Pull off anything with your fingernails or with tweezers. If it moves, get it if you can. If you miss it you know you'll be seeing that louse after a cream rinse combing and that will be it's last hurrah. However, I myself couldn't just leave the critter go, I went after anything that moved and went after the moving object til I got it. The funny thing about lice is that they position their bodies so it goes along the hair shaft and they are very hard to see (check out the videos). The lice grab the hair so they are in line with the hair, they are not constantly running in between the hairs. If they realize you are trying to grab them, they quickly scamper between the hair and then align themselves with another hair shaft and try to keep still - it's easy to lose site of them. I couldn't bring myself to grab them with my fingernails at first, I had to use tweezers (but, after the 4th time my kids had them I was angry and ripping them out with my finger nail). From what I understand the bugs tend to be nearly the color of the hair they are in. Black hair, nearly black bugs, blond hair, nearly opaque bugs. I don't know why that is but it makes sense - if the bugs are the color of the hosts hair they are more difficult to detect. I found that the lice in my kids hair were light brown with a dark brown spot inside of them - you'd think they would be easy to find with that dark spot but they weren't.

Any of them you pull out be sure to put them down the sink or even in the toilet. If you see little white things stuck to the hair, pull on them with your fingernails. Those are the eggs or nits. They can be pretty tough to pull off - using the cream rinse does seem to help. If you have to, pull out or cut off the offending hair. Sometimes the hair will break as you try to pull the nit off. I was able to pull them off with effort. Get them completely out of the hair. If you do not get the eggs out, you will have a new batch of lice in about a week. Depending upon how many there are in your childs hair you may find that you don't get them all out with the first sitting (you may think you have but then the next day you do a nit picking session and find some and you go to yourself "I could *swear* I had removed them all! How did I miss this *&^%$ $*%#* thing?!!!!" It can be pretty disheartening. But don't give up! You know you will get rid of them eventually! You just have to be methodical and persistant.

It took me over 2 hours to go through my daughters hair the first time we had lice in the house. Two horrible, stinking hours. I was really beginning to hate whomever it was she got them from by the end of those 2 hours. The first time we had lice I used a commercial lice killing shampoo but then we had a lovely new crop of lice about a week later. I used the commercial chemical again and had lice a few weeks later again. The third time we had them I used oil on everyone's head (sort of worked like the cream rinse but was messier and not quite as effective). After using the oil method I pulled out about 20 live bugs, a bunch more dead ones, and loads of nits. Jeez, I can't believe I didn't see them before! Oh, the Guilt! But after the cream rinse method I pulled out maybe 2 small live bugs, no dead ones, and loads of nits.

OK, by now your kid is begging you to stop. One of the websites I looked at said this could be a bonding time for you and your kid. NOT! At the end of those 2 hours I was telling my daughter if I ever found out she borrowed someone's hair brush or hat or barrett that I'd shave off her hair. I told her "I had better never ever have to go through this again". Sorry, bonding is out the window after 2 hours of pulling out bugs and you have a major bug-phobia. My poor daughter! So, don't do what I did, be calm and expect to have to dig through your kids hair for a while. I had no idea it would take so frigging long to nit pick! It really does take a while so be prepared.

After you have finished off each section of hair, be sure to put it up so it's not contaminated by an unchecked section. Be sure, as you go through the hair, that you are looking from root to hair end. You are looking for any bugs or nits. The big adult bugs should have been removed from the hair during the cream rinse combing. The nymphs, which are immature bugs, may still be in the hair due to their being small and possibly missed though usually they get stuck in the cream rinse and pulled out in the comb. The nits, I don't care what the comb is called, will still be stuck to the hair. Look for bugs and nits all along the hair. I noticed that the nits get bigger as they get farther away from the scalp. I assume this is due to the bug growing inside and therefore the egg grows as well... Some of the nits may be empty, you don't know for sure, remove them all. With schools having the no nit policies it is really important for you to be very, very careful as you go through your childs hair so you can return them back to school in a timely manner. That is if your child was sent home from school with lice. If your school does not know about your child having lice I wouldn't tell anyone and I'd tell your child to keep quiet as well, I would just treat your child and send them to school each day. The reason I say this is because I once told my daughters school that she had lice and that they needed to check the other children (BEGINNING OF RANT: I was being such a dutiful, caring, responsible, and stoooooopid parent by doing that. For one thing, you could hear their voice change as I told them - they went from friendly to ick in a heart beat. Second was that they pretty much didn't try to hide the fact that my daughter was the buggy one. And thirdly, I had to pay to have my doctor check her hair THREE times until I got her nit free. It sucked, it really did. After that I treated my children, put their hair up in a ponytail, and sent them to school which is a shame because you shouldn't have to feel pressured to keep quiet so your child isn't ridiculed. END OF RANT)

To get an idea of what a nit looks like, pull out a piece of your hair from the root. Look at the root. That white bulb at the root is similar looking at a nit. Run your fingernail over that root. Use your nail to try to pull off the root. Feel the fingernail "snap" over the root? That's how it feels as you "snap" the cement bond of the nit on the hair. You should be able to tell when you've dislodged a nit from the hair. Oftentimes the cream rinse will seem to soften the cement that "glues" the nit to the hairshaft so you may not notice that "snap". However, the nit still won't just come off the hair like a piece of dandruff will. Dandruff isn't usually round or oval in shape, it's usually flat and flaky and comes off the hair easily.

I can not emphasize enough, get anything out of the hair that is not hair. Scabs, dandruff, fluff, bugs, nits, everything you can find.

After you have finished, get the kid dressed OUTSIDE of the bathroom with CLEAN clothes. The reason for this is you just don't know if lice fell out of their hair and onto the floor or countertop - you don't want to introduce any lively, creepy, crawly lice into their hair if you can help it. So have them dress outside of the bathroom. And they are NOT to lay down on the bed or on the couch or on the floor nor are they to sit in a comfy chair until you have vacuumed!

Now, do the same prcedure above for each kid, oldest to youngest because the oldest tend to mind you better and will understand WHY they must stay away from the furniture and floor (at least, that's how I did it). My kids either went outside or sat at the dining room table until the coast was clear.

Every day, once a day (or twice a day if you can and if you are doing the spaz over the bugs), for the next 2 weeks at least, wash your childs hair then do the cream rinse combing carefully, and then nit pick through the hair section by tiny section. This is EXCEEDINGLY important. You must go through the hair to remove any bugs that hatch from missed nits. As you remove the hatched bugs you remove the chance of them maturing and being able to make their own eggs. Once the last nit hatches and the louse is removed via the cream rinse combing you won't have a lice problem anymore. But you must be vigilant!

For my son, who did not care what his hair looked like, I took the easy way out. I cut it all off.

After everyone elses hair is done do your own hair. If you don't have a spouse or friend or older child to help you just dump a bunch of cream rinse on your head, rub it in with your nails then comb through your hair with the lice comb. When I did this I tried to part my hair and rubbed the cream rinse into the parts. Then I combed through it with the lice comb. Then I put more cream rinse in, then I combed through. I repeated until I was sure I had no bugs (or, the one time when I did have lice [jeez, I was over the age of 35 and had lice for the first time in my life] I reapplied the cream rinse and combed it out until I saw no bugs and then I did it a few more times just for good measure and because I was freaked out).

One other thing. Do NOT share towels! Each person uses their own towel to dry their hair. And NEVER share combs or brushes. If one person brings home lice sharing these things is a sure way to merrily spread the buggers throughout the family.

By the way, if you are pregnant or breast-feeding, DO NOT use any lice-killing products! They may not harm the lice but they will hurt your baby!

Next, comes the house.

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Here are all the links to the BubblyBabs Lice pages:

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