Our kids can get all kinds of viruses and bacteria from their playmates. But what if they get something that will make us scratch our heads, literally? Read Mommy Kaylynn’s story on how they went to visit their family during the holidays, then came home with head lice.
What can you read in this article?
- How a fun holiday visit ended up with a parasite invasion.
- Coming to terms with it and what she learned from the experience
This is the story of how we all got head lice.
My kids are roughly two years apart. My eldest, Kian, is 3 years old, and my youngest, Kali, is 1 year old. I and my husband decided to move away from our families and live independently in Baguio City after we had our first child back in 2018. We then had Kali in May 2020 when the pandemic first started.
Although a lot changed because of the pandemic, we are still so very grateful to still be here and not encounter the virus throughout the entirety of this pandemic.
In October 2021, we decided to move in with my mother in La Union since I was going to be moving to the States for work. My husband would need help looking after the kids, and since he too had work, the best solution would be to move in with our mother since she wanted to be with the kids as well.
For the holidays, we then decided to visit my husband’s side of the family in Vigan City, Ilocos Sur. So, in December, we went to Vigan and surprised them with an unannounced visit. Everybody was excited to see us- all of our titas, titos, our elders, and also our younger cousins that were around Kian and Kali’s ages were there. It had been over two years since we last saw them, and it was Kali’s first time meeting them in person, finally.
Something crept in during our vacation
During our stay there, we spent most of our time playing with our relatives and hanging out with them since we all lived close together. But, during the last few days, my sister-in-law saw something in Kian’s hair that shocked us all – head lice eggs.
We checked both of their heads, Kian and Kali, and we found numerous eggs just clinging to the strands. We tried our best to take as much out as we could, but kids being kids, they just couldn’t sit still and wait for it to be over. I felt so ashamed and embarrassed at the same time.
We know it didn’t come from my husband’s immediate family because they swore they didn’t have any when we got there, and we had no clue where it could have come from since we were too shy to ask our other families as well.
There was also the possibility that we already had lice before coming to Vigan since the kids also played with our family friends and their kids prior to us going there. Hindi man kami nagdala ng Covid sa mga pamilya namin sa Vigan, pero nagdala naman kami ng kuto. Jusko naman.
My husband’s cousin, who was also a mother, told me that it would be okay and that stuff like this was very common among children. She also told me that I shouldn’t feel down by this and that they didn’t feel disgusted or anything like that. But as a mother and having this happen to my kids, I still felt like I could have avoided this if I paid more attention to what I exposed my kids to.
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When we got back from our visit, I told my mom about what we discovered lurking around in the kids’ hair and she said that it may have come from our family friends and their kids. And to make things a bit more cringe, we found out that we had it too.
I co-sleep with Kian and Kali, hence, I got it too. We sometimes share hairbrushes with my mom, hence, she got it as well. My mom, me, and the kids all got it- not just the eggs, but also the creepy crawling head lice as well. My husband didn’t get any though.
I ended up researching and reading articles from the internet to look for an easier way to get rid of our lice and avoid them in the future. I read that even though we practice proper hygiene, it will not make a difference. A person could be clean and practice good hair hygiene, but if they come into direct contact with someone who has head lice, they can get it too.
So now, we are more cautious of our surroundings, especially with who and how we expose the kids to. We put our hair up most of the time. After showers or in-between playtimes, we comb our hair with special combs. We check our heads from time to time. And we also use treatment shampoo when we can.
This was something I wanted to avoid throughout my children’s childhood, but it is indeed something that is very hard to avoid. Many children all around the world suffer from this, but it doesn’t mean that it is something very bad.
Treatment shampoo, regular checking, and just being aware of other people can help. I learned that there is no need to feel beaten down or defeated by this because even though many have gotten head lice, they still overcome it as they grow up.
