Someone please help me

[Justisme]

we have bed bugs 😭😭😭

I know I’m being unreasonable for posting on here but I am desperate and so so sickened and mortified.

i was lying there and felt itchy lumps on my neck increasing every few seconds. I decided to get up and have a look at my pillow and low and behold a disgusting bed but on my f pillow.

i am now on the couch and my skin won’t stop crawling and itching. It’s mostly phantom itching.. I can’t believe it. How did we get them?? What did we do wrong

we’ve had a baby and have let certain household bits slide, it’s my husband’s responsibility to wash bedcovers, bins, hoovering and clothes washing but he seems to think washing the bedcovers once a month is ok. I hate it and ask him constantly to wash more regularly- prior to baby I would just do it. He also gets into bed pretty much wet after his shower which I constantly tell him not to for this reason.

please please please help me- what do I do? I would have stripped the bed and be hoovering etc tonight If it wasn’t for the baby. As soon as she wakes up tomorrow what exactly do I need to do?

right now I feel like the only answer is to burn the bed

This is going to sound pathetic but I’m actually scared to look at the bites. It made a meal out of my neck and from when I felt earlier there are a load of lumps starting to rise

You absolutely can. They grow bigger after feeding on you too.

I used to work in a hotel and when a room got infested we shut it down along with the rooms immediately above and below and either side.

Fumigators came in to sort that room out and check the others before we could resell. In some cases mattresses were replaced, but this was very rare. You'll find them in the creases of the piping along the edges of your mattress and under any buttons etc on the surface but they'll also potentially be in carpets and skirting boards. Hopefully if it's a new infestation from the hotel you visited it won't be huge.

You need to get the exterminators in.

You'll have to move all of your furniture away from the walls of your rooms, and take all the bedding to the washing machine for a very hot wash.

All the clothes you've been wearing since you came back from the spa have to be washed also. Same goes for clothes you have in wardrobes and drawers.

Don't forget coats, jackets, hats...

It's worth going to a laundromat to put everything into a nice hot dryer.

The exterminators will spray your mattresses and bed frames, your furniture, and all around the perimeter of every room. They may also spray carpets, rugs, and curtains.

The spray they use is pet friendly iirc, but ask.

If you have carpets, I recommend a professional carpet cleaning after a couple of weeks.

DS and his GF got bedbugs from patients at a clinic DS worked at. It was a nightmare but the exterminators did a good job.

@notmyrealmoniker

Bed bugs are not at all unusual. They are a global plague right now.

I feel for you. We ended up getting an infestation 5 years ago from guests who came to stay and brought bed bugs with them!

Firstly, try to get something to put on the bites - you don't want to keep scratching them and cause a potential infection.

Be careful when you move from your bed to the sofa. If your sofa is fabric, you could transfer the bedbugs there if they're on your clothes.

Best thing to do is get pest control in. We got someone from the council. They did charge us, but it was worth it You'll need to leave the house for a few hours while they fumigate the place. They will ask you to strip the beds and put all your clothing in the wash to prevent a reinfestation.

Good luck!

Thank you to some who have said see if council provide a service. Just checked and they don’t.

I think I would rather go private then at least it can be done asap and if we need a new bed then that’s ok too. I would rather get rid of every last one. Will hoover - does washing the carpet help too? It’s a heated carped washer but not sure how hot the water is

I did take my clothes off and had a look at them to see if there were any bugs on them but couldn’t see any. I did have a very close look so I am hoping I don’t transfer..

We had bed bugs after having a baby, we hadn't been anywhere or had visitors so we could only think they came from the hospital. Cost us £800 to have heat treatment on maim bedroom and livingroom but it got rid and they never came back

Steam cleaner on mattress and carpet etc kills them off

Ok things to do
• wash all clothes, bedcovers and curtains on a very high heat and then dry on a high heat - does this go for daughters bedding too? Either way I will do hers too- separately.

• thoroughly inspect bedding bed and surrounding areas.

• call pest control and get them to come round
• hoover everything- move everything and hoover under there too. does that mean I hoover before or after the pest person has come round. Or both?!

• buy a new bed? Most people seem to be saying this but someone made a good point about the new bed being re-infested if the root of the problem is not exterminated.

• I need to call the hotel too don’t I? I don’t want this happening to anyone else, @terriblyangryattimes what would you advise? I don’t know for sure but it can’t be a coincidence..

A powerful steam cleaner kills bedbugs and eggs on contact.
I've got a Karcher one and used it to treat people's mattresses over the years in homes and hotels.
Once you have the problem under control, strip the bed back to mattress once a fortnight and steam clean it on all sides, leave it to dry all day in a ventilated room and put clean bedding on at night. Same with pillows. Once you have a steam cleaner you will never be without it. Fantastic for bathrooms, floors, carpets, upholsterym curtains, mattresses, windows, ovens - everything except leather.

@hellosunshineagainxxx our baby is 18 months old so I don’t think it’s from the hospital. We went to a rather old spa hotel almost two weekends ago and think we got them from there.

and ouch. £800 is a lot of money. I’m not looking forward to the expense especially at this time

You can do it yourself but it’s quite an effort

www.healthline.com/health/healthy-home-guide/how-to-get-rid-of-bed-bugs

@Pasc611 can you recommend a good one that will do the trick but won’t break the bank please?

You most likely got them from the hotel.

If it was only 2 weeks ago you don't have a big established infection so it won't be so bad.

Call a pest exterminator tomorrow.

In the meantime, it sounds conterintuitive, but DON'T move out of your bed. Moving to the sofa or another bed means they may migrate with you. Try to contain the infection to just one room/bed.

There are two approaches to dealing with them.

First is treatment/whatever the thing is they put down. This can be brutal in that you have to bag EVERYTHING in your house that is soft - clothes/towels/bedclothes etc. and run them through a drier at a high temp. Then wait 2-3 weeks while living out of those bags. Second treatment goes down and hopefully works (ours didn't but ours was well established as ds who brought them into the house from uni didn't react to the bites so had no clue -so they had months)

Or high heat treatment for your house. you leave the home and they heat it to super temps. you leave everything as it is and just return 8 hours later when the heat has subsided. This worked for us.

Personally I would get rid of the bed, the mattress and maybe the pillows.

We had them and it was awful but tbh the treatment was the worst - bagging and tumble drying and waiting and then one bugger still surviving. horrible.

The high heat treatment was so easy (we also got a bed bug detector dog in before and after - I'm in the US but I think they have them in London).

Good luck. you are in very early stages. I doubt there are many. A pest exterminator will solve this for you.

I am super careful in hotels now. I always inspect the mattress.

One of my student houses had bedbugs. It was awful and made me really sick as well as being covered in bites.

Definitely call the local council and they will come out and spray your house for you. Buy a new mattress and wash all your bedding and PJs on a really hot wash.

You can bring them back in your luggage, so I would tell the hotel and it's up to them whether they then investigate at their end.

Absolutely can see bedbugs once they've fed and grown. We had the misfortune of staying in a hotel room that was infested (we discovered in the middle of the 2nd night). It was obviously a long established infestation some were very big and it was shocking where they came from. Literally crawling out of cracks in the wooden bed frame etc. now when I go away the first thing I do is strip the bed and check the mattress and room for any signs like blood stains or shredded skin.

I can't remember how long, once we got rid of the bed it didn't take too long. You just don't see them anymore or have the bites.
They go in any small gaps in the bed frame so maybe you can take it apart to treat it?

ok so i have been up and taken off all the covers and checked the mattress. No sign of poop skin shedding dried blood spots (I found a little spot on my pillow where I was lying last night and it bit me)

the bed is leather and wood so the headboard is covered in leather- I can’t really take that apart and I don’t think they could crawl inside it? We do have drawers underneath frame of the bed that I will be removing and washing. So far I have the duvet in the wash so it’s going to be a long washing and drying day. Will also hoover the carpet mattress etc and steam clean the mattress.

could I have got lucky and it’s just one that we might have picked up and brought back from the hotel?

When we had bedbugs someone from the council came and ID'd the one I'd caught and fumigated all the bedrooms, only took an hour or so.
He checked to see where they'd come from, it was a bag of clothes people had donated for refugees, in the spare bedroom.

After the fumigation we opened the windows, gave bedclothes a normal wash, vacuumed the mattresses and carpets and that was it. They were gone.
The council didn't charge anything, I don't know if it's the same now.

Thanks @RoseMadderAsHell lots of people have recommended this but I’ve had a look at the council info page and sadly they don’t.

We got rid of our bed as too many places for them to hide but kept mattress. I didn't see one until I had bites for a week or so and then went looking in all the crevices of the bed. They didn't bite my husband only me. I read at the time that some people either don't get bitten or don't react to the bites.

@hellosunshineagainxxx did you ever see any when you went looking for them? Or signs of them- like poop skin shedding etc? We looked for signs and actual bugs but couldn’t find anything

i suspect my husband doesn’t show signs of being bit either.. me on the other hand..

You need to creep in when it is dark, whip back the sheet with a torch in your hand and you will see them scatter.