Sorry this could be long & more of a rant than anythng & the bastards in question are bed bugs 
Found out we've got bed bugs [yuck emoticon]. We've had them for ages (been bitten etc) but only saw evidence about a month ago. We got the council in (who were bloody useless) & claimed (after the quickest daytime inspection of the mattress & leaving a bright light/heat lamp thing in the bedroom for a week with a sticky base that the bugs would be attracted to & get stuck on ) that there was no evidence of bugs & that DH had probably brought fleas in from his office. Knew this was very unlikely but couldnt do much without evidence. The bloke also claimed that as DH was being bitten on the torso & legs, it was unlikely to be bugs as they tend to bite the upper body/arms as they are the part out of the bed - that despite being told DH sleeps with his legs out the bed.
Anyway, month or so ago I was getting into bed & saw this thing crawling over the mattress. Caught it in sellotape & after a v bad night sleep, DH stripped the bed the following day & found loads of the bastards in the bed base.
Got Rentokil out & they confirmed it was bugs & that we had them at every stage from eggs to adults & seemed like a bad infestation (not surprising when we've had them for so long). They said there were 3 options to get rid. Option 1 to use chemicals which need 3 treatments at about £400 a treatment & which would mean getting rid of bed & bedding after (& poss other things too, not sure) & no guarantee of getting rid. We didn't want to mess with chemicals with 2 little ones & with no guarantee of getting rid.
Option 2 heat treatment of just the room suspected of having problem (they get a tent & put everythng in the tent & heat to kill everything). Again, no good as they thought they could've spread to other rooms with being do many of them (although kids never seem to have been bitten). Not sure of the cost of this.
Option 3 heat treatment of the whole house. They bring in a generator with pipes that they put into each room & gradually heat the house to 60 degrees (which they said guarantees to kill all stages of the bug). We'd have to be out the house for over 24 hours at a cost of £4 GRAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We decided this was the only option to guarantee to get rid & although had to scrape the money together, we couldn't go on with sleepless nights & the problem geting worse (affects your mind as well as your body) so made arrangements to stay in a hotel last week (at our cost). They came in, did the work & when we came back, we found loads of the little bastards dead around the floor of the bedroom & there'd apparantly been one in the lounge too. Great we thought. We then went away for the rest of the week on hol safe in the knowledge we'd be back to a bug free house.
Got back on monday & DH checked the bed (become a habit of checking every night to get rid of any visible ones) & lo & effing behold there was one crawling over the skirting board. It had been dried out somewhat (obv by the heat) but hadnt died & had been there a week so could've laid loads of eggs etc. AAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!
Called Rentokil who got in touch with the company doing the heat treatment & they now say maybe they were in the cavity wall (gone from a GUARANTEE of getting rid to a maybe they are somewhere the heat didn't get). So now we think there could be more eggs hatching (could take between 3 weeks & 3 months before we started to get bitten before we knew if there were any more alive) which I think they wanted us to do, no way jose!
So now we're having to wait to see if they can come up with another solution which will poss involve another nights hotel stay while they repeat the process they guaranteed would work the 1st time.
I'm so pissed off cos you only get a 7-10 day guarantee of the work (7 days of which we were away) so if we hadn't caught this one we'd have been up the creek. Also, they didn't tell us originally what things should be moved from the heat & although some of the things shouldve been obvious (jelly & choc etc arent going to survive in 60 degree heat) we didnt think to move things so we have had cupboards with tonnes of stuff in we've had to chuck. We're not even sure tinned stuff will be ok to be heated again & left (but that's another question). They did move some stuff into the garage (tv screens etc), but a reed burner was left on new fireplace & has melted to it, paint had gone claggy on some doors, new kitchen units have gone bobbly among other things & although we couldn't have avoided some of the things, had we been told in advance, we could've avoided other things being damaged/spoilt.
Also really pissed off at the council. Had they checked properly months ago the infestation wouldn't have been so bad & we probably wouldn't have needed the expensive treatment. Anyone know if it's worth a complaint letter to the council or would I be wasting my ink.
So still can't have a decent nights sleep & waiting game to see what the next step is (thankfully the £4k doesn't seem to have been taken from account YET!)
Sorry for the V LONG rant 
, glad to get off chest & feel free to ignore!