Threadworms and cleaning - advice needed!

[MoiraRoseForPresident]

Hi all - looking for some advice from any parents who have battled with the dreaded threadworms before!

Woke up this morning and changed DC3’s nappy to discover one, small threadworm - first time we've experienced this - Queue me telling DH to head out and grab Ovex for all of us!

My question is regarding how often I need to wash bedding and toys?

We have an entire conservatory full of the DC’s toys, and honestly, I can’t quarantine them all, but on the other hand, I simply cannot wash every single toy and the end of every single day for god knows how many weeks - I’d be there cleaning til 5am each morning!

I’ve stripped all of our beds (4 in total) and it’s all in the wash atm, I’ve bagged up all of DC’s soft toys that were on their beds, I’ve taken the cushion covers off of the sofa and will be washing them too, i’ve bleach cleaned the bathroom, all surfaces downstairs and will soon be hoovering everywhere thoroughly.

But do I really need to strip and change all four beds, every day for 2-3 weeks?!

So far, no one else has any signs of threadworms, just that one I found in DC3’s nappy, but I can only assume the little buggers have joined our family via DC1 going to nursery two days a week - hence me treating all of us as suspected victims!

Treat everyone in the house

Change all the bedding

Cut all your nails short

Repeat regularly until they are gone 😊

And towels😉

No you don't need to change beds daily
I didn't do all the cleaning and bleaching you are doing either

The advice online is conflicting and confusing!

Some sites say to do it everywhere for weeks on end, to scrub everywhere with bleach and so on and so forth.
Yet others are saying to strip beds every few days, and the house should be 'ok' after one large clean, so no need to keep constantly doing it.

I've never tackled threadworms before so feel completely lost - just want to do what I can to ensure we get rid of them as quickly as possible!

I did a deep clean initially then used sudocreme on their bums to help stop new worms emerging until meds worked.
I didn't clean any more than usual after the 1st deep clean.
Ours were caught at nursery, I informed the school in the hope they would advise other parents to check and treat children. Never happened and we had a second infestation as a result. It was very expensive to treat us all as we're a family of 7 but once on top of it I kept checking/treating the youngest 2 until they finished nursery.

Well how long can an egg live for?

Sorry, haven't phrased that well. Say there's an egg lying on teddy. It hatches and a wee bastard appears, but there's nothing to eat in teddy. Will it just die off?

It won't hatch until swallowed. I think they can hang around for weeks. We had them for years on & off. I just kept washing everything & dosing us all with Over. Eventually we stopped getting them when the kids got older.

ovex

Ovex everyone, change beds and boil wash. Nails cut short . Then back to normal tbh.

You can clean all you like at home but the second they go to school they’ll be surrounded by eggs!

Clean bathrooms and hoover as normal. Wash towels. Wear pants in bed and change them each morning. Could also shower each morning to wash away worm eggs from the night. You don’t need to go overboard. Eggs aren’t killed by disinfectant or heat either so no point going mad.

Oh good lord I have never as much as changed the bedding as mine wore underwear and pjs so it was unlikely any worm would have escaped. As for the sofa covers??? I would have just treated everyone in the house with one spoon of vernox, possibly a second one a few days later for the offending child.

Ok so maybe I'm going a little overboard then!

All of my three are still in nappies for night time and wear pjs over the top, so I also didn't see much point in stripping and changing 4 beds every single day!

I'll perhaps do it every three days, just to be on the safe side.

We've all had our first dose of Ovex, DC3 has a bottom full of sudocrem (mostly because he's so sore down there, bless his heart!) and I'll keep on top of my usual household ways - I'm generally incredibly clean and wipe down everywhere/Hoover everywhere every day anyway, just wasn't sure about the toys as I've seen mixed things online.

Some sites stating all toys need to be washed or those that have been touched need to be quarantined for a few weeks that'd either mean my dc having f all to play with, or me scrubbing 80,000 things every night. Neither of those situations sounded appealing to me!

In my house we just treat with ovex, change the sheets, and do some nail trimming. Then do it again if/when they return. It's next to impossible to get rid of all the eggs, so do your best like hoover/change the beds and any washable soft furnishing covers, but don't drive yourself mad. Likelihood is they picked them up at childcare and will pick them up again.

Avoid play sand. Cut nails. Throw away old nailbrushes.

I was a nail biter and clearly someone in my class at primary was going untreated as I seem to remember having them often. I don’t remember DMum doing all that extra cleaning and she had hugely high standards. Just having to wear knickers under pjs until cleared. I would have thought being in nappies should help break the nighttime scratching/ transferring?

@Blondiecub0109 that's what I'm hoping to be honest, as the thought of having to wash and change four sets of bedding every single day is draining me just thinking about it! It's hard enough being at home with three young dc, without the added stress of 10x the washing and scrubbing everywhere from top to bottom!

We've never encountered threadworms before so I really had no clue what to do about them - I kind of went in to panic mode and stripped absolutely everything and went bonkers with the bleach! But I'm hoping I can ease up a little, as spending the next 2-3 weeks constantly cleaning and washing everything in sight doesn't sound fun!

Their life cycle is 2 weeks so you need to dose everyone in two weeks time as there will be eggs hatching over that time. I would do 2 weeks after that too

Yes definitely another dose 2 weeks after the first, and short nails

I don’t do anything else except clean PJs and sheets.

@minipie yes all nails have been trimmed, and we've got our next dose lined up for two weeks time!

Do I need to change all the duvet covers and pillow cases as well as the sheets? I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to get everything dry alongside my regular washing as we don't have a tumble dryer!

I washed all sheets, towels, bath mats, flannels that were in use on a hot wash.

Washed pjs and any recently worn pants.

Quarantined cuddly toys.

New toothbrushes.

Ovex. Cleaned bathroom. Hoovered (esp bedroom). Cut nails.

After that I would put kids to bed in pants under PJs (and me) and put a bit of Vaseline round the bum hole for a couple of days to avoid itching and scratching. Then wash their bums and hands each morning and wash their PJs and nighttime pants. Keep that up for two weeks, and then ovex again.

Then back to normal.

And try and blank it out of your mind till next time.

The sheets etc shouldn’t get eggs on again once you’re doing all the other measures.

Yes duvets and pillowcases, no point just doing sheets. And everyone’s at once. Laundrette to dry.

You said you have a baby but of older kids as well and they have playdoh bin that, and then wash baby toys that get put in mouth (just in washing up bowl).

New toothbrushes? That’s a new one on me!

Yes I do change duvet covers as well as sheets and tend to chuck the pillowcase in too although that’s less necessary. Basically you want to wash anything that may have touched their bum area, in case it has eggs on, and do whatever you can to prevent them scratching the area and getting eggs on their fingers and then into their mouth (pants, short nails, wash hands v regularly etc). The key thing though is the double dose of ovex - the first dose kills adult worms, and the second dose kills any worms that were eggs at the time of the first dose - before they are mature enough to lay eggs themselves.

We have had them repeatedly (bleurgh) but it’s not because of reinfection from the home. I can tell as there is a long gap between episodes and none during lockdowns. It’s from school and DC2 ‘s nail biting habit.

Would it harm us if we took ovex at weekly intervals instead of two weekly? I just want to be sure they're gone

My daughter had them multiple times last year it was horrific.

Clean all touch points, door handles, kitchen cupboards, light switches, drawers, literally anything kids height too! For things you can't scrub such as walls etc I just went around like a crazy person with the dettol aerosol spray, spraying absolutely everywhere as it's not WET and it kills them off. For the toys which are probably germ central id just half heartedly spray dettol aerosol on them, and properly clean the ones they use all the time.

Change bedding slightly more frequently and make sure you treat a second time like Ovex suggest.

Also it might be embarrassing but it if your eldest who is at nursery gets threadworms 100% inform them because they will let parents know & parents will then treat their child and the germs won't be coming back to you in a few weeks!!