lice to know you

This is not a post I want to write, but by golly if it helps another mom then it was worth it. In case you missed it, my school aged kids got lice. yuck. double yuck. triple yuck.

We found it, treated it and we thought it was going away. We treated it a second time (because that's what the expensive treatment "advises" you to do) and we still had LICE.

quadruple yuck.

The life cycle of a human louse is something every mom should know. Prepare yourself with knowledge my friend, and learn from my mistakes.  Almost every website had conflicting information. This is what I know to be true: baby louse is called a nymph. It reaches adulthood in a week. After adulthood a female lays 8 eggs a day (again, every site said something different). Eggs are called "nits" and hatch in about 7-10 days.  ALL NITS SHOULD BE REMOVED. Some say, "white nits are alive and brown are dead/hatched". The next site says "brown nits are alive and white nits have hatched". Just put on your big girl pants and a good movie to watch and get them ALL out. Here's a tip, because my oldest had dandruff and was hard to distinguish. If you can blow the speck out of their hair, it is not a nit. Those suckers are glued on by a concoction satan made himself.

A nymph is almost invisible. I'm not even kidding you, smaller than a pin head and invisible legs and teeny brown spec of a body. You can not see it with a naked eye, but with a flashlight and really really looking for it. Oh yeah, they are fast too.  The nymphs move fast because they have to eat the fastest=that's when they spread so easily without being aware of it. So let's say Napolean Dynamite goes to school with lice, his grandma/aunt/mom doesn't tell anyone, and those nymphs spread like wildfire in a classroom or at church (think of the pew you sit on, ew). By the time you can see a louse and it has laid enough eggs to catch it without looking for it, you are in some deep doodoo sister. The lice have been there awhile. And yes, I've been having lice nightmares for two weeks, my head itches 24/7 and I'm still paranoid about going out.


Here is a list of things that worked and did NOT work, when treating lice.

things that don't work:
1. 
RID
NIX
most of the over the counter products the lice have become immune to. nice right? in our little town those boxes are $15-18 a box!! and when your daughters have long hair that's one box per treatment.

2. 
the combs that come with those packages are also GARBAGE. don't rely on them to rid you of your not so friendly critters.

3.
NOT telling people your kids associate with at school/church/play dates/bus that your own family or member of the family has or has had lice. Don't be ashamed or embarrassed, a lot of clean kids from clean families get lice. you should be more ashamed and/or embarrassed if you keep it to yourself and let the other families wander in the lone and dreary wilderness till the critters are large enough to stage a full blown attack.


things that worked:
1. The TERMINATOR comb. buy it, keep it in your first aid kit. it was amazing! just when we thought we were lice free, this arrived in the mail. I still had 5 days of combing through their hair (yes, you have to comb through and check for nits for 14 days on everyone in the family) left so I had a good comparison of before this comb and after.  after the second treatment, all nits/lice are supposed to be annihilated. well guess what? this natzi comb pulled out over several baby lice. and i'm talking, smaller than a pinhead and invisible babies. I would never have seen them/caught them without this comb, which would have led to another lice attack. KILL ME NOW.

2. this treatment, it was expensive and I believe it preys on desperate mothers, but it worked. It also comes with a full refund guarantee, and Ty is a big fan of those.

3. Cetaphil face cleanser. I know right? Apply an entire bottle of it to the scalp and let sit for 2 minutes. Then comb out excess and blow dry hair dry. Let sleep in it overnight and shampoo in the morning. Repeat this process two times a week for 2 weeks. Luckily we were over the lice and had bought $$$$ worth of treatments and didn't have to try this.

4. Combing through every day with coconut oil (lice apparently despise the smell of coconut and the oil makes it easy to remove nits) for 2 weeks and using your nails. yup, I had to pull off almost every nit with my nails. Those early combs didn't get them and by the time I got the "terminator" almost all nits were gone.

5. Cutting the girls' hair short. Combing through and nit picking  was taking 2plus hours a night . The shorter hair saved my sanity! Thank you Ashley Bowler! There is a special place in heaven for you for that selfless service.

6. Calling and notifying the school and all friends/classmates ward members etc. Sure, it was embarrassing to tell everyone but I wanted everyone to check before (if in case they had it) it got worse. I told EVERYONE the kids had had contact with or were in our house for the last week. And I had to keep asking (demanding) the school to keep checking my kids' classes. A reinfestation would have sent me over the edge. Trust me, I was already at the edge by this point. I'm not even joking, talk about stressful. Lice was one of my worst nightmares, and boy did I get to live it. I wouldn't wish this on anyone.


These are some of me delousing arsenal. The detangler Uniq one is one my sister bought me from christmas (it's amazing!), and it helped the combing through on the days we didn't use coconut oil. I don't know if the Licelogic products work or not, but I'm still spraying everyone's head and all the furniture every day just in case!