A Mother's Nightmare: Hair Lice

On Saturday, I was preparing Larissa for dance class as usual when I noticed something odd. She had white specks on her hair near the roots of her hair.

I felt a little puzzled and decided to do a thorough check when it clicked. Larissa had hair lice. It then dawned on me that her complains of itch on her head is because of these little bastards!

I decided to let her skip her dance lesson and brought her to let my mom check. I recall having had hair lice once when I was a kid and we managed to get rid of it.

After letting my mom check, we confirmed that its hair lice. I went over to the Chinese medical hall and bought a bottle of hair lice lotion. Yeah, they sell it there! Its Malathion Lotion and you can buy it over the counter at any major pharmacy. The medical hall I bought it from was selling a bottle at $7 and Unity Pharmacy sells it at $8 per bottle.

Unfortunately, for the lotion to be applied properly/evenly, it meant that Larissa had to lose her curly long hair. We popped by the hairdresser and had her hair snipped to a short bob. Do note that even with her short bob, we had to use a full bottle of lotion on her hair.

The lotion has to be left on her hair for 12 hours so I applied it at about 6pm in the evening to be left overnight. As malathion is highly flammable, leave it to dry on its own and do not attempt to dry it faster by using a hair dryer. Place a towel under the child's head to prevent staining the sheets.

The day after, I washed her hair with normal shampoo, changed the sheets and brought the used bed sheets to the laundromat near my place.

I used the hot sterilization wash to kill the lice and its eggs. By the way, I also got the lice as we share a bed and had to use the same lotion on myself.

To ensure that the lice are all killed, repeat the lotion 7 days later to kill any other lice that have hatched.

We are now lice free and I have informed her childcare. They did a check on the rest of the kids and none of them had hair lice. Perhaps we are just unlucky and one lice crawled onto our heads. Anyway, having hair lice is not the end of the world. Lice does not spread diseases and are just pretty uncomfortable.

Always make it a point to check the kid's head for lice if they are scratching excessively. :)