Has anyone actually got rid of bedbugs?

[Cheapfluffyrug]

My daughter has had a couple of bites since we got back from holiday a month ago, and last night found a very suspicious bug on her bedroom wall.
It turns out she hadn't unpacked her suitcase and just shoved the whole thing under her bed. 😫
Her room also smells a bit sweet and musty but we can't find any other proof of infestation apart from that one bug.
The room was renovated 3 months ago, and everything is new, so no signs of blood stains or spots. They would be easy to see.
We have bagged up anything washable and started putting that through hot washes, hoovered her room and sprayed any crevices with Indorex.
We have a steam cleaner and mattress wraps coming.
We have some bedbug traps coming to place all over the house, no one else has any signs or bites.
All I read on the Internet is that we should throw away the bed and mattress and start again but I wondered if anyone had any more positive stories?

Oh definitely suspicious 😒 I hope it’s an easy fix. I would contact a specialist to get your house fumigated. Wishing you all the best. It’s my worst fear.

yeah, you need to get the professionals in

Professional spray. They can pheromone test to see if they’ve spread.
Worth getting one that will come back if you spot reoccurrence within a couple of months.
Expensive mistake, hope she learns her lesson.

We managed to get rid of them but we were incredibly lucky! They had infested our mattress we think after a stay in the UK (we live in Belgium). By the time we realised what was leaving the little black marks on our sheets, the whole mattress was infested. We threw it out, treated the entire bed, wooden bedroom floor and skirting boards with some industrial strength stuff every day for a week. We also put traps in the other bedrooms and the guy who sold us the spray stuff said that if we found one in a different room we’d have to have the house fumigated.
Luckily for us we managed to get rid of them after about 3-4 days. We washed and cleaned everything a couple of times. The spray stuff totally wrecked our wooden floor, and we had to put our new mattress in a wrappy bag mattress protector (which we still use now).
So, yes it is possible to get rid of them, but you have to be really thorough with the cleaning - one bug can quickly grow and make more bugs. If that is a bed bug that you spotted on the wall, it’s definitely an adult - the little ones are so tiny they look like black dots. I’ll try and attach some of my photos so you can see. Good luck!

That’s the underneath of our mattress at the moment we discovered them. The black dots are babies. The bigger bugs are the adults. When they’re on your sheets, you get black marks like if someone has put a felt tip pen dot that spreads a little.

We may be unusual here but we managed to get rid of them without bringing in the professionals, for about the same price as we were quoted and without having to use the strong chemicals. The infestation was in our matress. I found them by getting a wet wipe and running it along the inner corners of the bed, after months of symptoms (rashes, eye infections). We encased the matress in a protector before getting rid of it. We ripped up our carpet and carried it outside in bin liners. We got rid of all furniture in that room and had it repainted and had lamimate flooring put down. We got a cheap metal bed frame and replaced the matress. The whole house was cleaned every day or so using a steam mop, incl the carpets and sofas. All other mattresses were encased in protectors. All clothes that could be were washed at 60 degrees. We were lucky that we had a spare room to move into temporarily and that the other rooms werent affected. I did a major declutter. The only chemicals we used were some spray off amazon that had good reviews and I sprayed it in the affected room. I realise this was a huge investment in time and resources and we may have just been lucky they hadn't spread. But I had read about chemical sprays not working and our quotes were quite expensive so I thought we should just give the room an overhaul as it was very dated already (we had not long moved in so they may have already been there!). That was 3 years ago now. Took about a week of finding new bugs in that room but no recurrence since.

Nothing to offer because I have bug phobia and there were bedbugs in our hotel in Malta and, since then, I have PTSD and refuse to stay away as often as possible.

Other than professional assistance, I would probably blowtorch my home or just move house.

I'm sorry you're going through this!

You could wash the bedsheets in a scented washing machine liquid. Something natural but that bed bugs don't like. To at least keep them off the beds

Check with your local council because some UK councils do offer an affordable pest control service to get rid of them for you. But sympathies because they are awful!

Watch videos by Green Akers on You Tube and buy some crossfire - it’s expensive but worth it! We got bit in groups of three, had weird musty smells and thought we saw bugs in the sofa but never found anything definitive. Crossfire cleared the house and car!

Oh don’t waste money on things like traps you put on chair and bed legs - we spent loads on traps, mattress covers, a steam cleaner etc before going the chemical route! The chemicals have a residual effect so it kills bugs for a month after spraying so treat for 2/3 months and then you will be bug free! Do buy masks to wear while spraying and vacate the house for the day afterwards - we found 4 hours was not enough time for it to dry in!

Yes! Me! DON’T MOVE YOUR MATTRESS. All that does is drag bedbugs through your house and then you get bedbugs on your sofa. The witch who sold us our house had clearly done this, they were EVERYWHERE. Try to contain them:

• If you need the loo in the night, strip off PJs and scamper naked down the hall – nothing leaves your room.
• Washing gets put in a special bag that dissolves in the machine: bag up in your room, including stripping off (sorry!), and put the whole thing in the machine including the bag
• Tumble dry like you hate the environment
• Pull your bed away from the wall – the bastards can’t fly but they can climb the walls and DROP onto the bed. You want them to crawl onto the bed. I mean, you don’t, but to kill them you do:
• After thoroughly vacuuming the mattress and bed frame, you’re going to sprinkle diatomaceous earth all over the frame and in a ring around the bed. At night, the bugs will seek your CO2 and crawl to find it – crawling through the earth kills them
• It’s worth pulling your sofas out, hoovering them and doing the diatomaceous earth there too
• Repeat a week later. In-between enjoy your relentlessly nude 24/7 routine of bagging things and crying
• Also after hoovering, wrap the machine in a bin bag and transport outside to clean it in the garden

We got the pros in to do all this – they identified that previously, the house had had the regular smoke bomb treatment and all that does is explode the bugs everywhere. They were on the ceilings.

We had a baby at the time but she was fine as the bugs seek out adult CO2 so if a baby is next to an adult, the adult gets bitten not them. You and DD need to be the bait in the beds to get the bugs to crawl through the diatomaceous earth. Any bed you need sorting, someone needs to sleep in it to get them lured in. Have fun!

Reiterating exactly what KoalaKoKo said.

Don't buy any bug bombs as they have no residual effect, and will disperse the bugs around the room. You need to buy crossfire (can get it on Amazon, it's around £75 a bottle) and spray all beds in the house, sofa and cracks and crevices in the bedrooms around the beds.

Buy cimexa (similar to diatomaceous earth) and put it in all the cracks. This dries bedbugs out when they walk through it and they can't become immune.

Hoover all the rooms and dump the vacuum bag in the outside bin afterwards.

All clothes go through the tumble dryer for at least 30 minutes (they can go through dry to prevent damage). Use a steam cleaner if you have one.

There's a group on Facebook called "The struggles of living with bedbugs support group" that will talk you through each step exactly.

I didn't have bedbugs myself, but I did experience them in an Airbnb, so did a huge amount of research into how to get rid if needed. Feel free to message me if you need further info.

P.s. that looks like an adult female (more of a rounded body) so it's likely there will be eggs and nymphs elsewhere in the room.

My friend got the professionals in but they didn’t use chemicals. They used heat which kills the eggs and bugs in one go rather than repeated use of harmful chemicals.