I mean, really, who has bedbugs? Nobody I know. Not in my whole life. That particular scourge had never visited upon us. Not even when we traveled and stayed in motels or the homes of other people. Not ever.

And then there were bedbugs, in MY bed. Itchy things. Just like a mosquito, with a swollen bite that itched. A cluster of them, actually.

They don’t last long, those bumps, by morning they are gone. Not even a red rash where they were, just gone. You mighta dreamt it but it was too itchy to be a dream.

More bugs, bigger clusters of itchy bumps. More bugs, more clusters… On the arms, the neck, the feet. Wherever you are not covered by clothing, or wherever the bugs can get under the clothing. Sometimes along the waistline where they crawl under your clothes.

We caught them from someone else. We were living in someone else’s house when HE bombed his bedroom. Our bedroom was across the hall, and I’m sure some of those bugs just packed their suitcases and moved across the hall to our bedroom. We moved out a week later. A week after that, we had bedbugs in the new house, only in our bedroom. No other bedrooms were occupied by people.

First a few bites, then the insanity of too many bites to even sleep!

So we did the logical thing. We washed everything we could. Sheets, pillow cases, and blankets. Can’t wash our pillows, wrong kind to wash.

It got somewhat better, but didn’t stop them entirely. And when you wash your sheets, the bugs retaliate and bite you more the first few nights. No idea why they do, but it is a confirmed phenomenon.

So we bought flea powder. This, my friends, is the thingamabob that does the job. Or so they say.

We dusted between the mattress and the box spring. Just lightly.

We dusted under the mattress pad. Just lightly.

We still had bedbugs. For six more days. They got less and less.

We laundered again, and sprinkled a little more flea powder on – between the mattress pad and the mattress cover. We keep the mattress pad in place with a mattress cover.

No bedbugs. Just a little mild wandering itchiness (no bumps) from the flea powder. Zyrtec to the rescue.

I am chemically sensitive, so we used a type labeled as “natural”. Smells of chlorine (I’m terribly allergic to chlorine), but did not irritate me very much.

But the bedbugs were gone…And then they weren’t. Sigh.

We are told they have a long life cycle. I begin to doubt this. They just reappear too fast after eradication, and they bloom too fast.

We are told that they disappear if you launder weekly… or even once every other week (we always have, but not the entire bedding, just sheets). We are even told that laundering frequently is enough to get rid of them, but it does not appear to be, even when washing in hot, and drying long.

The bedbugs got worse a month after we dusted. I could not dust again, too much chance of anaphylaxis if I do.

But I have learned some things about them.

Flea powder really DOES kill them, IF it is really flea powder. Most of the garbage out there today is not really flea powder, and the stuff labeled for bedbugs is actually WORSE. Some is just diatomaceous earth (which only works on munching bugs, does NOT work on sucking bugs). You’ll read online that bedbugs feed on dander and mites and other things in your bed, but if you LOOK at the body of the bedbug, depicted in so many images, it has ONLY a proboscis to feed with, which is ONLY useful for sucking blood. They HAVE to suck blood to LIVE, and that, pretty much DAILY. They can’t eat any other way, just like a Mosquito.

You need something with pyrethrin, or malathion, or diazinon in it to really kill bedbugs. Or fleas. There are, of course, other chemicals, some as effective, but most completely INEFFECTIVE.

Flea powder today is not what it was 50 years ago. Or even 30 years ago. It is FAR LESS EFFECTIVE, while having overloads of things that do NOT kill bedbugs, but which ARE dangerous to people. Some also have deadly fragrance components (can cause deadly sleep apnea, and even sudden neural death) which you can smell THROUGH the sealed container.

Light colored sheets help you spot them more easily. But light colored sheets also get STAINED by bedbugs. Little blackish to dark brown spots. Bedbugs are little reddish brown spots, so it makes it hard to SEE them once they’ve been leaving droppings on your sheets. Too many spots – you have to look for the ones that move.

They stain the sheets…. and blankets. It does not seem to wash out, even with bleach, though bleach does lighten them some. We keep the lighter colored sheets and blankets though, in spite of the stains, because we can SEE the little bastards and grab them off into a tissue and send them floating out to sea in the flusher.

BTW, Cockroaches also stain sheets. Big dark brown spots. Very nasty. And it is a stubborn stain. Cockroaches just pepper your sheets in certain travel pathways (right between your pillows), whereas Bedbugs tend to dot and streak more randomly, and in SMALLER stains.

Now, I have also learned why bedbugs chomp on you twice as much right after you wash the sheets.

They hide in the folds of the bedding. They hide in the crevices of the mattress. They burrow wherever they can in the daytime – they don’t like light, so when daylight comes, or when the lights go on, they head for the deeps, and disappear. Even when you have a lot of them you may not SEE them when you remove the sheets and blankets. Very mysterious… but they are still lurking.

Some bedbugs live downstairs permanently, in places they don’t get disrupted from. Or try to. Some live upstairs, in the folds of the bedding, snacking and enjoying entire meals at the buffet each night – a little leg here, a little wing there, some neck, a little back, sometimes chest at the neckline… These are the foodies of Bedbugs.

The downstairs Bedbugs are less choosy, and generally more hungry. They live on their upstairs neighbors, who come downstairs to hide in the daytime. The nasty little beggars are cannibalistic. If they can’t eat YOU, they will eat each other, sucking YOUR blood out of their own kind. Letting someone ELSE do the foraging.

A friend of mine says she loves this description because SHE KNOWS THESE KIND OF NEIGHBORS!

Another says her ex husband was definitely a downstairs bedbug. But that is another story.

Back to the science…

So when you launder and kill the upstairs bedbugs, the downstairs ones have to come up to feed on you personally. And they are hungry. Viciously so.

The downstairs crews are also the reason why laundering alone is often ineffective at eradicating them.

We finally took our mattress pad off, and the mattress cover also. Too many layers for those downstairs bedbugs to hide in. The bed is not so comfortable… but then a bed full of biting creatures is not so comfortable either, and this is WAR after all. I have to sacrifice to win, I guess.

I went to bed sick one night (nasty case of mumps, very painful), and was just too cold. Put a light blanket on top of the blankets already on the bed. Slept fairly cozy most of the night. Woke in the morning and turned on the light, and there on the fresh blanket was a big bedbug, like he had always owned that fresh blanket. He went swimming for breakfast.

Point being, they love layers. Layers of everything. They use ALL THE LAYERS.

Something about snuggling under the covers and getting all warm and drowsy without thoughts of creeping things waiting in your bedding to feast on you as soon as you drop off… I long for that. It almost seems strange that I do – because all my life I never thought about sleeping WITHOUT bugs as being a privilege – it was just the norm. Now it isn’t, and I want it back.

We are making enough progress that I get peaceful sleep once in a while. But not nearly enough. I want MY BED BACK.