Last weekend Miss Five
had her beautiful, long, golden locks chopped into a bob. Seven weeks of
battling the ‘kutus’ will do that.
I wrote some time ago
about our experience with nits when Master-then Four brought them home from
kindy and shared them with the family.
The twins were only
one at the time and, after I got over the shock of my babies having head lice,
I realised there wasn’t a lot of hair for them to hide and found only a couple
lurking.
But several years on,
discovering activity in your daughter’s long and knotty hair, is a whole new
ball game.
Although the rest of
the family managed to escape them this time, it has still been a seven-week
exhausting battle.
Female lice lay seven
to ten eggs at night and when you treat the hair it is not treating the eggs.
Therefore, when all the eggs have hatched nine days later, another treatment is
required. It should just be a nine-day ordeal.
Not so this time.
Despite the special
shampooing, fine-tooth combing, hair clip, brush and comb sterilization and hot
water washing of the bedding, towel and school uniform on a daily basis, they
just weren’t going away. And it wasn’t all the new lice hatching either. Big
giant kutus would turn up the day after treatment. And so the cycle repeated.
How was this happening?
It was doing my head in and, come to think of it, it was feeling rather itchy.
Myths abound that “well-to-do”
people with clean hair don’t catch head lice and it’s often still a taboo
subject. Perhaps there’s even an element of not wanting the finger to be
pointed in the event of another child catching them but, after several weeks of
unsuccessfully battling these invaders, I finally spoke out.
The teacher was onto
it in a flash, sending out letters to parents and getting the children’s hair
checked. This turned up a number of others, including, according to Miss Five,
her close friends. Between them, it was kutu-central.
I don’t know why I
thought I was in this alone, when, in reality, there were other parents close
by dealing with the same thing. It hadn’t occurred to me that, of course, she
was returning to school and being re-infected.
Funny how us parents
had all stood together in the playground at pick-up time harbouring this
knowledge for fear, I would imagine, of rendering our daughters unworthy of one
another should their “secret” be revealed.
One day I decided to
break the ice: “Oh those nits have been a nightmare but I think we’re on top of
them now,” I declared.
“Tell me about it,”
said the other mum,” looking relieved. “We’ve had them three times.”
Another mum joined in
with her daughter’s experience and there you have it. If we’d just communicated
this sooner, it might have nipped this ongoing nightmarish rigmarole in the bud
sooner.
The catch-22 of the
situation is that hairdressers won’t touch hair that is infected with lice but
when you’ve got hair as long as Miss Five’s, it’s a mission to eradicate them.
Life would have been a whole lot easier if she had short hair. Each night I’d
spend nearly an hour combing through trying to remove the knots before
attempting to comb out any lice while she sobbed in pain and begged me to let
her go to bed.
We finally got on top
of them, with the help of some diluted tea tree oil (repellent) sprayed in her
hair before school each day and so I was able to book her in for the big chop.
Once proud of her
beautiful, golden locks, she was happy to now get them all cut off. She
certainly looked different but managed to pull it off and still look cute.
Despite a fair amount
of scratching as I write this (have you been?), I am happy to declare us
kutu-free and put all that behind us (for now).
So you’d think I’d
have a bit more time on my hands. However, Miss Five’s new do requires
straightening every day and I just can’t get it looking the way the hairdresser
did. On Monday morning I had one nervous little girl worried that her friends
wouldn’t recognise her.
After some attempts
with the straighteners on my part she stood in front of the mirror and looked
at her short, wayward hair in dismay. “Oh mummy,” she said woefully. “I wish
this never happened!”
# Notify your child’s
school or pre-school if head lice are found. Some provide information and
natural treatments.
Fact Box:
# Headlice is a common
problem around the world. They are small flat insects about two-three
millimeters long that breed all year round;
# Their colour ranges
from beige to grey but they may darken as they feed;
# Headlice cannot
jump, fly or swim and remain on the head after swimming, bathing or showering;
# Female lice lay
about seven – ten eggs each night while the person is still. Eggs are firmly
glued to the hair and laid close to the scalp. Hair grows about one centremeter
a month. Therefore any eggs found more than one centremeter from the scalp will
have hatched and died;
# The eggs (nits) are
small and hard like a grain of salt and are typically cream/brown or grey in
colour. After hatching the nits (empty egg cases) are white;
# Eggs hatch in nine
days and a louse will live for up to 40 days but only up to two days off the
human body. Headlice found off the head are usually sick, old or injured and do
not lay eggs;
# Common places they
are found are around the hairline at the back of the neck, behind the ears and
on the crown.
No comments:
Post a Comment