Home Remedies, Pt. 2

I mentioned last week that the kids had both gotten lice this month. 

Let's all pause for a moment and do a collective OHMYGODGROSS.

Lice is gross. And nearly fucking impossible to control.

The shit spreads like wildfire, and once it's in your home and life you may as well burn the house to the ground, change your name and move to Brazil. 

When Lainie first got sent home from school with lice, I was like "It's cool bro. I got this."

I picked her up, swung by the daycare to get Jack, and checked them both once we got home. 

Yep. both had lice.

Ew.

We headed to Walmart and I had every intention of buying that over the counter shampoo they sell in the pharmacy, until I read the ingredients and the warnings. 

That shit is straight pesticides. 

PESTICIDES in your kids hair.

Soaking in their skin.

Running all over their bodies.

Yeah. No.

I get that lice are bugs, and you typically use pesticides to kill bugs, but bathing my kids in poison as a FIRST resort didn't really seem cool. 

So we instead headed to Sprouts.

There we loaded up on Tea Tree Oil, which I know almost all bugs hate. It's antifungal, antimicrobial, and it disinfects better than bleach and peroxide. 

We also picked up this stuff. 

It's all natural and full of good herbs like Rosemary and Cedar oil. Also it smells delicious, but I'm apparently the only one who thinks that {the kids hate the smell of lemongrass oil, which is in here}. 

After that we went home and I started up The Google. I searched for home remedies for lice, and holy wow, you guys. I found so much. 

There are upwards of 20 credible and natural ways to take care of lice, without using pesticides. 

We tried the following:

1. Wash both the kids hair with Dawn dish soap {the blue stuff} and let it soak for 20 minutes {also, read this article on all the crazy uses for blue Dawn dish soap. You can use that shit for anything}.

2. Follow up by washing with Selsun Blue dandruff shampoo {the Selsun Naturals kind with Salycilic Acid in it} Let that soak for 20 minutes.

3. Go outside in the bright sunshine and pick out all the dead bugs - and they will be dead, and as many of the eggs as you can. 

4. Blow dry the hair on hot and on high, holding the dryer as close to the roots as you can. This will loosen the remaining bugs and make them easier to find, and also destroy the remaining eggs.

5. For Lainie I followed up the blow dry with flat ironing her hair at the roots. The direct, high heat kills the eggs and dissolves the glue that's holding them to the hair strands. 

6. Slather mayo on the hair, especially at the roots and scalp. Put a shower cap on, and let it sit for as long as you can. 1 hour is good. 2 hours is better. Overnight is ideal. 

7. Use more Dawn to wash out the mayo

8. Wash the hair one last time with the lice shield shampoo.

9. Check again for eggs, remove any that are remaining, and then rub tea tree oil mixed with olive oil at the nape of the neck, behind the ears, and put a few drops on the scalp, in as many places as you can. 

Next you have to start disinfecting your house. 

Bag your stuffed animals and dolls, and tie them closed with as little air in the bag as possible. 

Throw them outside in direct sun for 2 days.

Do the same with any pillows that cannot be washed. 

After the two days, spray all that stuff with tea tree oil and water, and throw it in the dryer on high heat for 2 cycles just to be safe. 

Wash all your clothes. 

Seriously, everything. 

Vacuum every corner and crevice of your house, spray the mattress with tea tree oil and water and bag them for 48 hours. After that, vacuum them too, as well as the couch and any upholstered furniture. 

If you have cloth seats in your car, spray those too, close the doors, and park the car in the sun all day so it's hot as hell inside. 

Then vacuum like a motherfucker. 

It's a lot of work. 

It's a pain in the ass. 

But if you have kids, at some point you'll probably have to deal with this, so be prepared. 

You can find all kinds of resources on home remedies for lice here, and here.

May the force be with you. 

Home Remedies, Pt. 1

*Before we begin, since the world is full of law suit happy buttholes these days, I want to make a small disclaimer: I am not a doctor. I am not a medical professional in any way. I am a mom who writes a blog. If you are stupid enough to treat what I type here as The Gospel, and disregard what you've been told by your doctor, and you end up getting hurt, you should be slapped, arrested, and lose internet access forever. 

Thank you.

As some of you may know, I'm one of those weirdos who hates taking medicine. Even when I have a headache that I know full well could turn into a migraine, I wait as long as I can, as if the headache will give me points for bravery and go away on its own. I hate antibiotics and how often they're prescribed, and I wish more doctors took a natural approach first, rather than whipping out the old script booklet and sending us on their way. 

Over the years, especially with having kids, I've tried to find natural approaches to small injuries and minor illnesses, especially stuff I could do from home with what was in our kitchen, and most of the time using antibiotics as our last resort. 

In my exploring, I've found some pretty cool ways to treat some seriously annoying shit.

Like....

Black Tea for Pink Eye.

If you have kids, you know what pink eye is and how much that shit sucks. It's disgusting to look at, it's ungodly uncomfortable to have, and it's highly contagious. If one kid gets it, you can almost bank on the other kids and maybe even you contracting it too. 

A couple years ago, someone told me about using black tea for pink eye instead of those expensive prescription eye drops. We didn't have insurance at the time, and the drops were $65 dollars without it. I tried the black tea, and low and behold the pink eye was gone in less than two hours. 

What you do is brew a regular bag of black tea {any kind, I used Lipton} and a bag of chamomile tea together. 

Let it cool to room temp. You can put it in the fridge for faster cooling, but don't let it too cold because have you ever put really cold eye drops in your eyes? Kind of hurts}

Lay your kids head on your lap with towel under their head, and using a wash cloth soaked in the tea mixture, gently wipe the infected eye, moving from the inside to the outer corner. 

The goal here is to rinse the eye, so don't wring the cloth out too much. Make sure plenty of the tea is pouring over their eye, and you're wiping out the gunky stuff. If the kid is older, or it happens to be an adult, and will allow you to put drops into their eyes, then use an eye dropped and flush the eye that way. 

Do this until every hour or two hours until the infection is gone, and be sure to do the non infected eye as well, but use a separate cloth. 

Within an hour the redness and yucky gooey stuff should be gone, and the eye should completely clear up by the end of the day. 

During nap time or bedtime, it doesn't hurt to soak a washcloth in the tea again and put it over their eyes while they sleep.

It's like a miracle how fast it works, and the chamomile should take most of the itching and burning out of their eye so they stop rubbing it, which is what usually spreads the infection.

There's also...

Garlic and Olive Oil for Ear Infections

When my kids were babies they both got ear infections so often I thought they'd never be off antibiotics. And the antibiotics they kept being prescribed sucked. Vomiting and Diarrhea were the main side effects, and Jackson got both so badly he had to go to the ER for fluids. 

Then I discovered using garlic and olive oil for ear infections, and my life was changed.

What you do is pour some Extra Virgin Olive Oil into a little bowl, and crush a garlic clove into it. {You do need to use fresh garlic. Garlic powder and store bought minced garlic will not work}

Let it steep for about an hour, and then strain out all the pieces of garlic that are floating around. 

Use an eye dropper, and put 5 or 6 drops into each ear. 

Make sure your child is laying on their side when you put it into their ear, and you keep them on that side for about a minute so it doesn't all drain right back out when they roll over. 

Do it every couple hours for 2 or 3 days until the infection is gone. 

Your kid will smell like a pizza, but it does work. 

Again, I am not a doctor. These are just a couple of the things I've done with my kids, how I did them, and how they worked for us. Use your common sense, people. If your kid is getting worse and not better, in an obviously extreme amount of pain, or just not right in whatever way, take them to the damn doctor.