Head Lice (Leave Mommy alone, She’s Shaking in the Corner)
I was a green mom until the lice came. When I saw the first louse I thought, “My goodness, get me some chemicals.” There were parasitic beings suckling on my child’s scalp. After sitting down and crying for a minute (twenty perhaps), I pulled myself together, grabbed a cup of wine and did what every rational mother does.
I called my mom.
Nothing, she had no advice for me. “Ask your brother, one of his girls had it a few times,” was her only bit of help. I call my brother who chortles, “Ha ha, it’s your turn to throw everything out.” I could hardly reply, I thought I was talking but the words wouldn’t come out. He continued, “Call the Doctor and get a prescription.”
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So. Not. Funny. I love clean. I adore a clean and spotless house. When my windows glisten I beam with pride. Now I have a child with bugs in their hair. I call the doctor for the prescription, who am I to reinvent the wheel?
A few hours later I’m on the phone with the Pediatrician and our conversation goes exactly like this:
blah blah Shampoo no conditioner blah blah put the medicine on blah blah comb for the lice blah blah get 100% of the nits out blah blah clothing laundry blah blah blah blah there is no shame in this you aren’t a bad mother but people will think you are blah blah Malathion.
It’s my truth, leave me alone.
In reality the Pediatrician gave me the basic head lice rundown which is found all over the net (here’s what the CDC has to say). Kill them, brush hair with a nit comb for anywhere from one to eight hours, collect nits in plastic bag, launder everything in hot water and repeat… endlessly. Like Caroline Savery, I am a fan of Western Medicine. I’ve been known to taunt my mother for her excessive use of tuning forks in healing her wounds, but when I heard Malathion I stopped listening. I knew that whatever prescription the doctor phoned in would go unfilled, and that I would be on the hunt for a natural remedy.
Google headlice and you’ll find a host of natural remedies. I suspect that most of them are really great and simply getting your hands on them in the middle of an outbreak is the biggest problem. I was literally paralyzed; I couldn’t leave the house because I was overwhelmed with fits of hysteria.
I’ll give you the short version, because the trauma is still fresh. I combed my child’s hair for 11 hours over the course of one evening and a day. I used combinations of olive oil and organic hair conditioner. Between the eleventh and twelfth hours I cried for about 20 minutes and then I called The Picky Mom and stood around feeling inadequate while someone else took over my parenting duties. If I had a limitless bank account I’d recommend calling someone like The Picky Mom in your community within the first hour.
In less than 72 hours and my washer and dryer have hardly had a moment to cool down. I’ve washed just about everything we own on high heat and then put it through the dryer. I’ve used bundles of paper towels and rubber gloves. My families’ carbon footprint this week exceeds what is reasonable, and I feel awful about that. There are little victories though, I didn’t rub carcinogens into my child’s head, I met a most remarkable woman and we eliminated every bug and nit within three days.
Now I need a nap, because parenting isn’t for sissies.
Ugh! I am so dreading my first encounter as a mom with head lice. I know most kids get them eventually, and I hope I can fight them off so successfully too. Ideally before they somehow get into my hair too. My sister had to deal with that when her daughter had head lice. She said her head itched from the memory for months!
[...] July 22, 2008 at 3:57 pm · Filed under Green Options ·Tagged Head Lice, Jessica Gottlieb, Parenting, Writing I’m at Green Options today talking about head lice. [...]
Don’t feel bad, they freak me out too. I break out the chemicals too (I’ve had to do it twice, but luckily caught them before their were a lot of nits to pick out). I’ve seen so many children who just get re-infested over and over and over again because their parents just don’t know how to completely get rid of all of them.
You are a wonderful mom. It was somebody else that was a bad mom, their kids got head lice and gave them to your beautiful children….. You are a saint in my book. I would have given up LONGGGGGG before 11 hours!
Actually I never did fill the prescription. Olive oil, conditioner and un-manicured fingernails did the trick.
Jessica,
Good for you for not giving in to the temptations of chemicals. We initally did and they did NOT work for us. Most of the chemical shampoos do not kill the eggs so they say to reapply in 7 to 10 days. By that point, sanity had prevailed and we found a natural solution and the Terminator nit comb to use (both made by NitFree) that saved us and allowed us to ditch the chemicals and the cheap comb that came with them.
I actually carry the comb with me on vacation now just in case and every time the “Lice Letter” comes home I do a quick comb through of my girl’s hair and we keep a bottle of NitFree chemical-free Mousse on hand so we are not tempted to go out and buy the chemical stuff in our feverish rage to get rid of them as quickly as possible.
I am in Canada so we got our NitFree stuff at http://www.nitfree.ca but I think they also sell in US and Internationally through http://www.kleen-free.com. If I should nto have posted those links, please delete them as I do not want to sound like a shill for the company. I am just really impressed by theri products and they saved me, my fingernails and my sanity!
How aweful! I think it is so cool you resisted those chems and did it with natural remedies! The commenter above is right- chemicals never kill parasite eggs and you end up having to re-do over and over. You are certainly not dirty or a bad mom, most fleas & lice LOVE clean hair! When I was in 3rd grade my very OCD mom nearly croaked when she found fleas in my obscenely clean hair after visiting a dirty vet clinic. I wish she had your patience and would have used natural solutions.
oh that is horrible!! when we had moved to a new state, new neighborhood, new friends our first sleepover with a friend gave us all lice, all 5 of us. With my mom being a clean freak it was horrible, oh it was horrible
We have battled this off and on for months. My step-children keep bringing it back to our house because my husbands ex doesn’t do laundry she just sprays everything with the chemical spray and leaves it. My 15 year-old is allergic to the chemicals and nearly lost her hair from the precribed shampoo. Upside is
I’m finding alot of success with mayo and /or olive oil and washing and drying everything in site but I’ve had to limit the triplets from other siblings rooms because they come back to our home every other week invested again. What a nightmare! I’d love to give the ex some house keeping lessons and tips on prevention. I’ll have settle for praying for her to figure it out.
Three of my five were infested the year we lived in south florida. tried chemicals, tried the combs. kept coming back. until the day we saturated their heads with olive oil, stuck a shower cap over them, wrapped their naked bodies in sheets for warmth (white so we could see if anything jumped off), and had them sit in the bathtub watching a portable dvd for forty minutes. then the combing out, took two of us only two hours (kids watched three hours of dvds and ate four bags of candy to keep the peace-well worth it!) They haven’t had it again since we moved, now I use tea tree oil shampoo as a repellent during the lice season. The olive oil was my savior, even if it took multiple treatments i wouldn’t mind. it does take a buttload of shampooing to get the hair not greasy afterwards, but leaves it nice and shiny for weeks.