OMG bedbugs - Help!!!

[eatyourveg]

Woken up with bites for the last few weeks and had assumed it was heat bumps as dh doesn't like to sleep with the window open

he's had blood spots on his side of the bed and on the pillow and we didn't know what it was maybe midges perhaps

last night I got so itchy I slept in the spare bed and when dh got up he said he found 4 crawly things in the bed which when he squashed were bloody.

the mattress is 5 yrs old and the divan bottom bit about 12. Will replace these but all the furniture in the room is pine or fake pine. Do I need to get rid of all that too?

i think it;'s the carpet that will need to go, the rest can just be dosed with insecticide. Don't get all environmental about this, they are almost impossible to shift.

Phone the council for advice, and then pest control companies. They can be cleared but it's a big job, you will need professional help.

dh won't phone the council as they would classify the house as verminous ?? and it means a lot of hassle even though its me here with the 3 kids on school holidays not him. He has agreed to a new bed, mattress and duvet but thinks the carpet just needs a shampoo and everything will be fine.

I have been boil washing all the bedlinen all day and really don't see the point in spending money we haven't got replacing the bed and mattress if they blasted things won't be obliterated by such action

Your house isn't vemenous! You can't kill them with shampoo, they need pest control as they are resiliant little bastards.

Do it properly or they will never leave.

I've heard that they don't live in your bed, but in the floor, and crawl up the bed legs at night. Someone I know was told to wrap sellotape round their bed legs, wrong way out IYSWIM? to make a sticky barrier they couldn't cross. I don't think that would work with a divan though.

I think they can live in the wooden furniture joints as well, you really do need to ring the council. When I was a teenager my parent's house had an infestation of cat fleas and the team that came to treat it arrived in a plain white van, nobody would need to know that you had been treated.

Behind the skirting boards and in the mattress, too.

Yep ive know them to have to take skirting boards off to treat behind them! Furniture and floor boards need to be treated also. You need to ring pest control the prolem wont go away on its own

Managed to persuade dh that we needed the experts. Council coming Monday. Not sure what they'll do - hope the room won't stink too much.

Washing machine has been on boil wash almost continuously as we had a divan (now in next doors skip) which is where we stored all the bedlinen.

New bed not going to be delivered for 3 weeks so its taking turns for the sofa and the spare bed

How do you think they got there, eatyourveg? I remember seeing a programme on household pests and it saying they are usually brought into the house on an item of furniture or in a suitcase or something.