eeek! aaaargh! bleeeeurk! got a leaflet home from dd's nursery saying that there is an outbreak of headlice. AND SHE'S GOT SOMETHING ON HER HAIR! AND SO DO I!!!

[RegenerAitch]

i am absolutely revolted. i know, i know, i know, v common these days etc but IT'S GROSS.

anyway, your help please. i left poor dd with the neighbours and raced round to Boots for a Nitty-Gritty comb, but the pharmacist said that cos i hadn't seen any live ones i couldn't use any treatment yet.

it's little brown casings that were in her hair, not zillions of them, but still...
have conditioned and combed (bribed dd with late-night lollipop that i didn't have any money for so must go and reimburse nice sweet shop lady tomorrow) and more or less rinsed and now she's in bed.

i seem to have EGGS in my hair, bleeeeeeeeeeee, as they are smaller and whiter (although christ knows it could just be skin, it's hard to tell).

so apart from listening to me moan...

how often do i have to do the combing thing? for me and dd, yes, and presumably dh if he ever deigns to return from the football.

i'd prefer to use natural stuff, at least until i've seen a living beastie when i will happily unleash the chemical arsenal.

any recommendations? sympathy, even? [molto molto squicked emoticon]

aitch look at forces sweetheaRTS tis me with the eskimo arrrrghhhhh

miniAitch ROCKS, BTW< and has deeply fabulous hair

lol, am off to forces sweethearts Right Now. dh (mine) was trying to get hold of you, apparently you have a Magic Key to something that takes him hours but he has been too embarrassed to ask you about it.
has ds taken to the eskimo at all? dd won't put the elephant family down. you should check ds as well, soz.

oh, the happy nights we have spent de-nitting. Like x100, we line them all up on the edge of the bath and examine them all closely. Then we wipe all the "newborns" (tiny weeny baby ones)in another area.

Then myself and dd have huge arguments over who gets to pop the biggest ones.
Sometimes they keep on wiggling, way after you have popped their body in half.

Ds fondly refers to them as his "bugglies", he doesnt like us to remove them as they are his friends that live on his head.

OK Aitch I sympathise: we've just had our first beastie outbreak here coupla weeks ago too.

Nightmare of ghoulish proportions (DS1 was crawling with em and I nearly vommed) No-one else yet but I'm madly combing twice a week...

Anyhoo. combed with conditioner first night to get em all out. When could get to pharmacy found out there's a new one that is chemicals, right, but it's not quite as sheep-dippy organophosphate as the old stuff.

It has dimethicone and isopropyl mysistrate or some such in. The methicone stuff is basically silicone and makes em all slippy and the other stuff, well, that just kind of explodes them from the inside out with too much water (think water balloon, but bug shaped and you'll get my drift...)

Gloried in the notion (though not sure why) that this was a physical action and not a poisoning one (though bolleaux of course)

But I did use it on DS1 because he's 9 and exposed to all sorts of chemicals in cheesestrings and space dust anyway.

No more lice or eggs since those first two days. No one else seems to have had them.

Good luck! It's a rite de passage (like being puked on and getting evil looks from the PTA chair for not running a stall at the school fair: we all have to go through it...)

new nuclear option only needs 10 mins BTW not overnight. for future ref, obv.

do you have a name for this, the guy in boots wasn't that bright tbh and may not recognise this product from your (gleefully detailed) description.

well, it's made by Full Marks but they're a brand rather than a product (as is Hedrin: they're diversified see, with many types cos it's so hard to keep up with the swarm of pestilence) so you do have to read the ingredients.

i am Learning A Lot this evening.

Ah, and next time, just lie about finding a live bug.

Wilf - your post has made me pmsl!!! Cheese strings and space dust!!

good poiint, wilf.

dh just home from football, ever the proud father he said 'oh dd's hair is so lovely, no wonder they wanted to get snuggled in there'. his mood lowered a gear when i advanced towards him with the comb.

hello again, ladies. can someone tell me how long i should continue with teh wet combing? it's been three days so far and there was nothing in her hair at all. i gather it's sensible to keep doiing it for a while, but how long, does anyone know?

Headlice became such a problem with dd that I got into the routine of combing her hair with nittygritty once a week regardless just to check. She has quite often had them with no itching and I otherwise wouldn't have known.
Ds once had such a huge infestation there wouldn't have been room on the side of the bath . No scratching then either...my dcs must have scalps like rhino hide!!!
Youngest dc is now 11 and no walking dandruff for quite a while now in the kiddiz household.

bleeeeeurgh...

this is the first time she's had anything at all, kiddiz, and it turned out that it's 'just' eggs and me and dh have nothing (although are also combing). how long do you recommend/ she probably got them at nursery and she's back there on mon and tues. do i keep going until i know that no-one has them at nursery?

You will never probably know that every child in the nursery is nit free. I'd leave it now for a couple of days and check her again. If she's still clear then leave it till the end of the week and have another look. A real pia I know, specially if your dd has thick curly hair. My ds has really thick hair ...thankfully short though so fairly easy to comb. My dd has very long hair and lice have been more of a regular event with her. I suspect because girls are much more huggy with each other than boys.

You do become more relaxed about it. Before I had children I used to work in a primary school and was horrified to see visable lice in a child with very fine blond hair. I'm much more matter of fact about it now.

that's true.
dd's hair is thick and sodding ringlety. a freaking nichtmare. but gorgeous, obv.

i was a bit pissed off, actually, with one of the dads at nursery. we were all told and were given a leaflet etc, and the dad kinda flicked at his dd's fine blonde hair and said 'oh we don't have to worry about that, we'd see something immediately'. and i was thinking, ffs, just CHECK her hair, don't wait til something lands on the dinner table.

tea tree oil does work as a deterent.

This is the other thing I do with dd1 as it seems now that she is at school we are getting headlice letters every week. So far dd1 has not had any.

I put spray in conditioner and then put her hair up in tight plaits. I also give her head and her hat a spray with this:

can get it in boots I think

Genius Eids. Where can you get this stuff in Oz? Just any chemist?

I'm definitely going for the defensive option. We've been getting lots of ominous warning letters from school recently.

Dd, 4, had them a couple of months ago. It completely grossed me out and reduced me to a pathetic, useless, jelly-legged 36 year old. I found out on a Sunday morn and immediately texed ALL my friends to see if they had a nit comb (got i'm sat here itching at the thought!).

WHY DON'T THEY BRING NITTY NORA BACK IN SCHOOLS!!!!!!!!!

There is no point in leaving the conditioner in over night. All the conditioner dow is make the hair easy to comb with a nit comb. It is is the water that stops them moving.

Wet hair, slather on loads of cheepo conditioner.

Comb through in sections, and 100x says it does become quite therapeutic after a while do this every 2-3 days for 2 weeks.

The lice will get smaller and smaltter as time goes on. If you suddenly get a big one, you have possibly been re-infested. Do this until you get 2 times with no lice.

The white egg shells are hatched, and don't need to be removed un;ess you want to for aesthetic reasons

wash hair at the end.

I found bribary with their fav DVD and chocolate buttons kept mine siting still.

Live lice fart their way out of the egg sac btw!

arfishy just got it at the chemist - day and night one I think or maybe a healthy pharmacy - not sure of you have that one in Sydney. Can also buy it online. Just google wild child!

Definitely don't buy the chemical nit removers did my dd hair last week and its now very brittle and dry,should have stuck to using a few drops of tea tree in shampoo and conditioner,but i thought shop stuff would be better ,my dd didn't seem to scratch but i saw something crawling so don't stress about being a bad mother.

cheers, all. boots have something similar to that wild child in their own range but it's presumably chock-full of weirdy chemicals as it can't be used on kids under six.

i've not used the nuclear stuff because i've never seen a live one, only the little brown eggs (actually not completely sure about this as my leaflet says that brown things are nits but i found an illustration online and it totally looked like what we had are eggs with 2 days til blast-off). anyway, from what you lot are saying, i don't think i will use it, it sounds revolting.

so i found about fifteen (eggs?) on the first comb, four or so on the second and none on the third. me and dh are combing also and have turned up nothing. i think i'll do it again tonight and then just be much more vigilant about always wet-combing whenever we wash her hair. thing is, that's once a week at the moment, so amn't sure if i need to up that or not.

am largely over the bleaaaaargh thing, because i haven't seen a live one. if i do... you'll hear from me. i'll be the one putting my child up for adoption.
thanks again.