Nits novice - help!

[KingDavos]

My 4 year old twins have picked up head lice for the first time and it's driving me mad! DD started itching last week then 2 days later DS started, so I did a visual check and used a plastic comb but nothing. Next day I noticed red bumps so decided to treat as assumed it must be lice. My head had started itching by then too. We all did Hedrin Once and I combed through with a nitty gritty afterwards but didn't find anything I thought was definitively a louse.

Since then have combed twice more but not really found much - could I be using the comb incorrectly? Is it really obvious when there are lice and eggs? I'm putting conditioner on and wiping/ dunking in water between swipes but mostly just see blobs of conditioner. I'm sure we must have had it and our heads are still a little itchy three days later - is it normal for the bites to continue to itch for a few days or more likely they are still there? I have washed towels, pillows, etc.

Planning to use the hedrin again in a couple of days and will continue to comb but any advice/ tips appreciated as I'm really not sure if I'm doing something wrong and am desperate to get rid of them!

Nits. Not Nita 🤔

We have a £10 'pocket microscope' with led light (science museum brand) and it's brilliant for checking scalp flecks.
You can see the louse inside the egg! The kids love it, I just shiver ...
I find eggs stick to the scalp/hair as opposed to grains of sand etc.
Live lice look more than fruit flies than I expected when I was a novice.
These days I'm an old hand at nits/lice and we go through a lot of Hedrin Once & conditioner, put it that way ...
DCs are 8 and 6 and we all seem to get nits at least 3 times a year. Yes it's strong stuff and we do get red eyes and a little skin irritation from time to time.
Combing/conditioning method never worked for us, we all have masses of hair.
Good luck OP, at least it's not worms in the bum.
Oh, the glamour of parenting...

Nitty Gritty is the only way to go on this. Frequent, daily if possible, combing of hair combined with a zoned approach that quarters the head and works section by section with no gaps and no crossing of strands is the method to use.

Be methodical and you can see nit free hair within a couple of days. Follow with two weeks of daily or less frequent comb through with the NittyGritty comb to ensure you capture any late bloomers or hangers on, or more likely new passengers. There may be a child at school who has heard that sharing is caring and is applying the principle to headline, albeit unknowingly.

What Serf said. Give it a rest HQ.

OP, if the combing gets tough, there's always the Hair Force. Expensive but very effective. They use heat to kill the adult lice and their eggs. They treated my little family last year. I wish I had gone to then sooner.

Wss ^

The fact nobody is recommending the book makes it even more embarrassing.

I'm wondering if your DC are having reactions to the stuff you're using as opposed to the nits themselves? Try just buckets of conditioner and the nitty gritty comb instead of anything medicated.

DD gets scalp eczema every time I've tried a lotion for nits on her, so we just resort to the nitty gritty comb with conditioner, and then when dried, the nitty gritty, a strong spotlight, and I wear cheapo glasses (weakest +sighted/long sighted) to magnify.

I then manually extract everything I can see and daughter gets to read, go on tablet while I do this. It's an hour every night, but it's effective.

I feel itchy just from reading this! Second what WiseDad said - be methodical, I only use conditioner and a plastic nitcomb. Start at the bottom with the rest pinned up and do a tiny section at a time. Do it everyday for a few days and a proper check every couple of days. Comb through every day after school to make sure there's not any hitchhiking from her friends!

If you have long hair use a segmenting clip so you can track where you have done and do small bits of hair.

Make sure you comb from the scalp. I always found them on the crown.

I suspect my daughter has the beginning of them again, planning on doing a comb through in the weekend. It takes a while to work out what you are looking for.

I know this is old, just wanted add when we had a bad case of the nits we used the nitty gritty comb and a lot of determination. My daughter has extremely long hair. Now sorted what I do is buy a shampoo and added a few drops of tea tree oil into and give it a good mix, and on last rinse I put one drop in. And touch wood being round our neighbours kids who recently had outbreak we have had not a sight. As when I had my son a year ago I forgot use tea tree and my daughter got nits and never had them before! Seems to work great as prevention