Bed bugs??

[Flowerfairy101]

For a while now I have been struggling to get to sleep due to itching. I lie there, feel an itch, scratch it, lie there, feel another and so on. This isn't every night, it comes and goes. I don't have any visible bites but have noticed black dots on my pillow cases for months now but I thought it was my eyeliner! Apparently this can be their poo..not seen it on sheets or mattress. We have moved house in this time.
I've just taken the sheet off and gone over the mattress with a torch and found 2 teeny tiny dead bugs that do look slightly like bed bugs, and 2 or 3 rice grain shaped things that are hard, look a little like pics of the eggs but Internet says they would be soft.

Is this evidence enough of a current infestation? Or hoping against hope they've all died in the house move..or maybe not bed bugs at all? Wouldn't I be covered in bites or itching every night? DP and I sleep in separate beds and he hasn't noticed anything but he isn't the most observant! Any advice much appreciated.

I’ve been bitten by bed bugs. Their bite is quite sharp and if I switched on the light straight away could find them crawling away. The like to live in the piping around your mattress. I would say they are about half as big as your little finger nail so not tiny. If you squish them they have an unmistakable smell that reminds me of almonds. They left a visible itchy bite mark on me a few every night. I did think it was mosquitoes at first. From what you have described I don’t think they would be bed bugs.

So you experienced this itching before and after moving house?

No reason why bed bugs living in mattress seams would die in a house move.

When you feel the biting put the light in and look. If there are bed bugs you will see them.

Fleas?

The bed bugs I saw weren’t as big as described by CalicoAnnie.

They were the size of a flea if not smaller, definitely not fleas though, more round. Think I'll have to look for more evidence tomorrow

Another strange thing is that if I lie in bed for the evening watching TV I don't itch at all but will do when the light is out and I'm trying to sleep!

I doubt they're bed bugs. I think you'd be seeing loads by now and if you're itching I would expect to see bites. I wonder if you've just started thinning about it too much hence why it doesn't happen when you're distracted watching telly

@aachangeisafoot this is what I'm hoping! I can feel loads of little pinpricks and itches now, keep whacking the light on and off like a mad woman but can see no bed bugs. Surely if I had been bitten 3 times in quick succession I would see one!

I think if you had bed bugs you’d know it. The bite is awful. I used to live in a country where they are quite common and we had an infestation from a neighbour.The most itchy painful bite I’ve ever experienced. There’s no way you wouldn’t notice an actual bite. They are truly awful and can leave you itching yourself raw for weeks after.

I would assume you are instead having some sort of allergic reaction or possibly head lice, if you are seeing them on your pillow case.

Honestly though, you’d know if you had bed bugs. They’re brutal and you’d be eaten alive.

They are awful! I actually woke up
to one crawling up my chest - paid the exterminator- expensive but so worth it!

We had a bedbug infestation last year (no idea how..assume Dh brought them home as he has to sleep away some nights)
We had a substantial infestation before we realised (ugh) and I have to say I NEVER felt a bite..not once. DH had a few itchy tiny bites but not enough to alert us to anything... the only clue was tiny dots on the sheets!

(just saying that you might not be 'eaten alive' ..I wasn't!

The bed bugs weren't large either.. maybe one or two were..about 3-4mm across but the rest were tiny.. (I guess 'young ones') We never saw a THING until I took out the mattress and looked with a torch under the seams and bed frame. They were reddish brown and the tiny ones were like little moving golden-clear specks.

We pretty much torched the house... stripped out the carpets, binned all the bedroom furniture, bed, mattress..everything. Luckily there were confined to our room but we had to have the house fumigated (local council do it quite reasonably) and had to boil ALL fabrics, move all furniture so the house could be sprayed. It was a nightmare.

Have a google for pictures. If in doubt... get someone in!!!!

Some people don't react to bed bugs so you wouldn't necessarily have a bite mark. When we had them only I got itchy reactions and noticeable bites (and they were bloody awful). DH, who was lying right next to me in the bed so would have been bitten too, and DS don't react to them at all, we'd never have known we had them if I hadn't reacted.

Your description does sound a bit like bed bugs, although they are larger than fleas. There's no reason they'd have died in the move, they're resistant to all sorts of awful chemicals, so a move wouldn't have bothered them. I reckon come the apocalypse there'll still be a fucking bed bug somewhere.

Bed bugs are definitely much bigger than flea size and you're unlikely to spot them. Bites would be in straight lines. But sounds unlikely luckily!

Well I've pulled the mattress off and checked it over, can't see anything suspect, lifted up the ottoman and found one tiny dead bug, could be a bed bug but its so small its hard to tell. Going to hoover it all out and hope for the best I think!

Some local children went on a school residential. Loads of beds were riddled with bed bugs a lot of the kids were covered in them. There was pictures all over Facebook the kids had taken of the nests down the sides of the beds and red swollen bites. Not a clue how they never spotted them when stripping the beds. They literally had to strip off at the door when they got home.

What you have might be dust mites.