So in a nutshell one of my best friend’s contracted lice in her house, and it like took over her life and our conversations for a week. I wanted her to share because its pretty funny and honest. Its also important to note that she now rocks a pixie cut instead of her bum length hair. So round of applause for our guest blogger Laura Myers.
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*Disclaimer: May cause the heebie jeebies*
The Discovery
So there we were; about to sit down for a nice meal at my mother in law’s house, when my innocent web search asking why my daughter was scratching her head, forever changed my life. Okay week. It forever changed my week. Every page, blog post, and heading suggested the same horrifying thing: Your kid probably has lice. After sneaking her up to the bathroom and peering into her little itchy scalp, I realized our truth – that myself and my two sweet baby girls were infested with crawling, breeding, blood-sucking parasites. It was NOT okay. NOT okay… I had moments in the days that followed where I considered purchasing and finishing an entire case of beer or a pack of cigarettes completely by myself.
Here’s the breakdown of my week with lice:
On Sunday, after The Discovery on my 5 year old, I knew it meant that inevitably her sister (2 years old) and I had them too. I mean personal space is not a thing in our house. The hubs and I immediately skipped lunch and went directly to Walgreen’s and dropped about $70 on Rid. I have thick hair down to my butt, so I needed a whole bottle just to myself. The girls have shoulder length hair. Hubsy started throwing all of their small stuffed animals, bedding, blankets, jackets, and anything on the floor of their room and our vehicles in the laundry. Take a moment to let that sink in. If you go to your child’s room right now, how many items are on the floor or bed? What all came into contact with their hair? It all needed to be washed in hot and dried in hot. ALL OF IT. We did probably 50 loads, no exaggerating. The bigger stuffed animals, extra pillows, and comforters got sealed in trash bags and stuck them in an unused basement shower for two weeks. We kept it bare bones for a while, only using a few pillows and blankets that could easily be laundered several times.
Once laundry was rolling, we put on the football game and started the shampooing process. I mention this because the game was starting when we started and ended as we finished, so this took about 4 hours. I followed the box instructions and left the Rid shampoo on 10 minutes, no longer, and nit combed. I used a bowl of white distilled vinegar to dip the comb in, and would dump it outside from time to time because I was worried that flushing the hair would clog the toilet. Anything that was tossed in the garbage, I sealed in a Ziploc first.
The 5 year old was the worst. I have never felt so disgusted in my life as I did pulling those nasty bugs out of her beautiful hair, and I have a certain bestie/blogger who watches pimple popping on Instagram for kicks (ahem). Lice are no joke. They are revolting little demons that don’t deserve to live, and yes, MANY lice were killed in the making of this post. The toddler wasn’t too bad, and I was the least infested; however, the hubs didn’t comb every single hair because he literally couldn’t, so who knows how many I actually had. My only saving grace was that I use T-Gel shampoo anyway because I have a dry scalp, and I read online that lice don’t like coal tar. Who knew dandruff could be a good thing? Anyway, after I was done with the 5 year old, we dunked her head in big bowl of white distilled vinegar because my father in law said that was the way they used to handle it “in the olden days.” DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. It turned out to be a HUGE mistake. She immediately started screaming at the top off her lungs and we had to rush her to the bath to rinse it out. She had red marks all over her face and neck afterwards. I ended up finding out through one of my million web searches that we should have diluted it with water. About 50/50 apparently. Whoops! Mommy fail #341 of that week. I spared the little one after the first kiddo’s reaction. Finally, at the end of that night and every night thereafter, I washed everything we wore including the towels, sprayed lice killer again, and boiled and/or froze all utensils and hair accessories we used.
On Monday I started googling things like, “am I a bad mother?” and “how to give yourself a pixie cut.” I couldn’t sleep at all. When I finally did lie down, I would feel things crawl all over me and I would wind up back on the lice-sprayed couch researching habitable planets without lice and the cost to get there.
On Tuesday we tried the homeopathic Licefree spray and nit combed with a metal comb purchased separately at Walgreens. It was fancy and had a light and magnifying glass, but it basically ended up being junk. My official recommendation is to use Rid, but find a nice, long-toothed metal nit comb. The plastic blue Rid combs don’t do the trick. I loved the one in the Licefree bottle, and, if heaven forbid this ever happens again, I would buy Licefree just to toss the product and use the comb. I say toss the produce because it had a licorice-esque smell to it, so after using it on a lunch hour one day, I felt like everyone knew my dirty louse-y secret. Furthermore, after I used it twice, the hubs STILL FOUND A LIVE-KICKING-FREAKING-LOUSE IN MY HAIR! Naturally, instead of waiting the 7-10 days to re-shampoo as instructed on the Rid bottle, I ran all 3 of us back through the whole Rid process again, only this time we used shower caps and let that poison sit there, burning our scalps, eyes, and necks for an hour. I was ready to rock the Britney circa 2007 hairstyle and own it. We were all fine though. No bald spots, no scarring. After a couple days of blow-drying 3 heads, my arms were so sore that I could barely load the printer with paper. The girls were starting to get dry flaky scalps, which made nit-hunting all the more difficult, so we added tea tree moisturizing cream rinse and oil spray to help offset the issue.
By Wednesday no more vile parasites were found, and by Thursday I couldn’t find a nit. We continued the daily T-Gel/tea tree oil/nit-combing/blow-drying process daily and did the final Rid shampoo with shower caps and nit combed the following Sunday. We didn’t blow dry that night because online instructions warned that Rid may be flammable, plus we were exhausted and our scalps hurt. The hubs said he thought he may have seen a few open egg sacs, but no fresh nits, nymphs or lice were found. Just to be certain, I rinsed each individual’s hair in the plugged bathtub so that I could check the water afterwards.
I have added the tea tree oil as a daily regiment for life because we all like the smell and it apparently works as a natural repellent for lice. Plus, it makes our hair shiny and hydrated when used with the coconut spray. I feel like a better solution would be to just NEVER GET FREAKING LICE AGAIN! But I digress…
You might be thinking that this is overkill, but I assure you, it isn’t. I chose to come clean to a few close friends, and they all did the same things when they found themselves in that situation. One family had to do it twice because the little buggers found their way back after all of that, and they had about 5 yards of hair in their house! My daycare said if everyone did half of what I did, lice wouldn’t be an issue. Having my kids get lice did something to me psychologically. I was physically and mentally drained from the late nights, but I was way too ashamed to complain about WHY I was tired when I was at work. Truly, I felt responsible and got ALL up in my feelings about it. It consumed me. I simply cannot overstate the self inflicted stress and humiliation this caused. I was worried my children would be labelled as unclean or unfortunate.
At the end of the longest week ever, and after about $200 spent on every product even lightly suggested online, I truly wish I could offer some comforting words to anyone going through this, but really, the whole thing absolutely “sucked” and I feel like I will forever be terrified until the kids are out of elementary school. So thankful for my man who literally nit-picked every night with love. Even when it was over, I would ask the hubs to check me, and he did every time without complaint. I don’t know how single moms deal with this, but those ladies are to be revered and praised! There was just one last step we did every day and that was to pray aloud, “Dear Lord, please kill every louse in this house, every louse on our heads, every louse in our cars, every louse in our lives, and never EVER let us get lice again.”
AMEN!!!
Code Name: Mama 