I need lice help. Ugh.

[rubidoux]

I really, really want to avoid pesticides, but I don't want to bother with a more natural remedy if there's no chance of it working. I was hoping someone could tell me of something they've used that worked. I've read about mayonaise, olive oil, coconut oil and those seem totally workable, if they work. lol Does anyone know?

[Purple*Lotus]

Tee tree oil. I suggested it in the shampoo to all of my clients when I managed the DV shelter. If one person in the shelter gets lice, they ALL get it. I think TTO helped prevent many cases, and yes, I did it myself when I worked there

[pianojazzgirl]

I absolutely swear by the Cetaphil method (also called Nuvo method). Google it. Basically you very thoroughly coat the entire scalp and hair with Cetaphil gentle facial cleanser. Then you comb and comb the hair until no more lotion will come out. Then you blow dry it until it is completely dry. You have to do this once a week for three weeks. The dried Cetaphil suffocates all of the lice but does not kill the nits. However after 7 days most of the nits will all have hatched, but will not yet be mature (ie. they can't lay eggs and they won't travel to other people). So then you do the treatment again to kill those nits. The remaining few eggs that haven't hatched yet will now hatch, but like last time, won't reach maturity before you do the 3rd treatment.

BTW this is much easier with short hair, and IMO is worth at least somewhat of a haircut. I once had to treat dd, ds and myself and we all got haircuts before hand. Ds was as short as I could safely cut with scissors and his treatment took much less time than for dd and myself. And also do not skimp on combing time. You really need to comb out as much lotion as possible or it will take FOREVER to blowdry (and it already takes much longer to dry than if hair was wet with water).

[rubidoux]

Thanks for that cetophil method! I may end up doing that.

I called my ped today and, to my surprise, they don't recommend any poisons! They recommend two methods: mayonaise or a concoction made up of olive oil, tea tree oil, and eucalyptus oil w/ a bit of shampoo mixed in. It seemed to work. I got several dead adults out of ds's hair. But I am having a hard time convincing my tired dh that we have to comb each other's hair for nits. And I'm having a really hard time finding the nits on ds. I like the every seven day plan for that reason. Although I'm feeling fairly optimistic about the efficacy of the doctor's potion, I think I may try the cetaphil bc my younger son is only 15 months and we're treating him, too (he will not sit still long enough to even be looked at let alone combed), and I'm worried about using the eucalyptus on him bc I've seen warnings online.

[libba]

We did the mayo treatment here and it worked great! Pretty messy during the hours we left it in but no lice after that and her hair was really conditioned too!

[rubidoux]

Good to hear about mayo! I bought a huge thing of it yesterday in case we need it. lol But right now we are totally excited about cetaphil! Who woulda thought we'd spend hours combing the web... ugh... but the really exciting thing about cetaphil is that there's no combing involved! And that's kinda key for me bc my husband is sooooo not into the idea of combing. Like I almost think he'd rather just live with it. Plus, I seriously doubt he could do a good job of it even if he wanted to. My friend who went through this a while back says "men can't see them." And I think she may be right. lol So, the next treatment is gonna be cetaphil.

[chattyprincess]

We went through lice this year. I was NOT a happy person. We hired a company to come out and de lice us...expensive and nutty but I do NOT do bugs AT ALL. They are actually a highly reputable company in the area and do tons of schools/camps etc. They do not reccomend any type of pesticides either and instead say the initail treatment should be dry hair sprayed lightly with water and then coated in cheap conditiner then combed through with a lice comb (small sections of hair) in different directions and wiped onto a white paper towel until all the "nits" and bugs are not coming off any more. They then reccomend coming like this before a bath every night and adding teatree oil or neem oil (couple drops) to the shampoo. The key is to buying a really good lice comb. After the conditioner and combing we would wash our hair out and then I would have us hang our heads over a white towel and blow dry us on super high heat to dehydrate any of the nits.
We were REALLY lucky and caught it super early, I only had 1 live lice and like 7 eggs/nits and dd had like 1 live lice and 10 eggs/nits.
HOWEVER, the neighbor dd caught it from had hundreds and hundreds of eggs (Ew.) and after the initial combing they only found about 20 more eggs(some are so tiny at first and cannot be combed out until they get bigger).
DH would NOT comb my hair through...I wouldn't trust him anyways he is not nearly as fussy as I am about things but thats just us. I would do the conditiner thing with combing every day and then blow dry upside down on super high heat over a white towel...it was a pain but well worth it to not have the reoccurances.

[rubidoux]

Originally Posted by chattyprincess

DH would NOT comb my hair through...I wouldn't trust him anyways he is not nearly as fussy as I am about things but thats just us.

No, that's us, too. lol At least my husband is not alone. He woulda made a terrible monkey.