My Nemesis. My Worst Nightmare.

We had one run in with head lice a few years ago when Hadley brought it home from the last day of Kindergarten. We went right out and bought lice shampoo and sprayed the house down with Lysol. It still spread to Holden. It was such a pain and I constantly felt itchy and gross. I am so paranoid about the kids getting those little buggers again!

Sunday night Kip was sitting on my lap and I saw something in his hair. What I saw looked eerily familiar. I jumped online and looked up images of lice. Sure enough, it was what I suspected. I was so grossed out, I almost pushed the poor kid right off my lap.

I had someone bring me a comb and I went right to work searching through every strand of his hair to squash the bugs and their nasty, little eggs. I know where the phrase searching with a fine-toothed comb came from. Luckily, he fell asleep on my lap and I spent over an hour searching every strand of hair. Then I searched through Hadley’s, Holden’s and Nate’s hair. Then Nate searched through mine. The rest of us were clean.

We had Kip sleep by himself that night, in our bed, where he had fallen asleep the night before.

Monday, I spent the day washing all the bedding, pillows, couch cover and all potentially infested clothes. I hung everything to dry outside, in hopes that the sun, peeking out from behind the clouds, would be enough to kill anything that might have survived the wash.

Multiple times each day, I have checked all heads and had mine checked. We must have caught it early because I haven’t seen anymore. For now, it seems that we are free.

On the CDC Website, I read that you should keep checking for two-three weeks to make sure there is no re-infestation.

Believe me, I will!

When we first got to American Samoa, I was told that we would most likely have to deal with lice at least once while here. Lice infestations are a big problem, especially in the public schools. Basically, it just circles around and around.

I have no idea where Kip picked it up and now I’m even more paranoid than I was before. Thankfully though, we made it through our first infestation and we are all still alive, healthy and grateful to be living in our new, island home!