Please help if you have had bed bugs

[BedBugQuestion]

What do the droppings look like? I'm freaking out as I found a black stain on top of my duvet cover this morning which had bled into the fabric slightly. Looked typical of what I see online.

I read you could check by wetting the spots and checking for a reddish brown colour.

I poured water on it and it sort of instantly dissolved and left a dark purple mark. It really was purple, not red.

But now I'm really second guessing myself as I can't think what else it could be?

I've inspected every bit of the mattress and frame, along the skirting and saw nothing.

Does it sound like it could be bed bugs? I have an absolute phobia and OCD so I'm not in a good place!

It's incredibly unlikely to be one dropping and even more unlikely to be on top of your duvet cover.

The poo is basically dried blood so not purplish. Also they are really tiny so the single mark would be very small.

We had them. It was horrendous, but when you went looking it was easy to find evidence in terms of multiple marks from droppings in hidden crevices plus bugs crammed into said crevices.

Thank you @ditalini that's so helpful. I went down a Google rabbit hole and saw that deoxygenated blood could be purple so thought it could still be a dropping.

Did you ever get them on top of the duvet? It did seem like an odd location.

I'm so worried as we're going to visit family this weekend and I was ready to cancel to avoid contaminating them. But I guess if I can't find anything it is at worst a small infestation. I won't spread anything will I?

So sorry you had to go through the ordeal :(

No. They were very much hidden away and certainly didn't come out in the light. I never saw one crawling about, only either under bed slats or right in the corner of the underhang of my bedside table, or dead ones after treatment.

We had what felt like quite a bad infestation but they were still very localised to the bed area - all the better to feast on me 😫

* goes to check under bedside table *

Were the droppings also in these locations or did you sometimes find them on the sheets too @ditalini ?

Sorry for all the questions, I will stop now! 😁

No. The droppings were where they gathered, not in areas they'd just walked across and not in random single blobs.

It was the bites that alerted me. If you've not had bites (typically more than one and in a line) or seen bugs or evidence of droppings in hidden places I think you're absolutely fine.

I think you need to relax. I've had bedbugs a few times and don't remember seeing any droppings (though it was years ago)

If you had bedbugs you would most likely know, as they bite in a line, look like mosquito bites and are very itchy. They come out at night and hide in cracks of wooden beds and in mattresses.

I'm 66 and when I was a child in the 60 s we had horsehair mattresses.
I kept getting red bites on my legs.
My mum kept sprinkling Keatings Powder on my sheets.(Picture of a red devil on the pack)
I now realise we had bed bugs,urgh ,

Thank you so much all, I'm officially reassured. No bites, but I don't tend to react much to any bites at all so didn't know if I could still be getting bitten and just not know!

Not nice memories