Who Has Bedbugs?

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 (this was already in progress, had nothing to do with bedbugs, only the time it took for the stain to dry on the floors in the new house). 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. (We later deduced that the ones on top got washed out, and the ones in the deep downs where they just feed on each other had to come up to feast on US.)

So we bought flea powder. This, my friends, was supposed to be 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. Of course, that doesn’t mean they don’t persist for months and months…

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. They are living elsewhere.

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. All of the ones that work are DANGEROUS to people.

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 and take the risks.

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 generally 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.

Now, when you don’t have a lot of bedbugs, you NEVER see them. If you have dark colored sheets or blankets you may never see them anyway, so switch out to lighter colors and you’ll find those little beasts.

When the weather warms up, they just SWARM on you, and you’ll be bit so bad you won’t be able to sleep. You may be bit so much you get a systemic reaction – it can happen. This phenomenon lead us to a great discovery.

One night I could not sleep for the itching (It was about 75 degrees in the house.). So I got up and turned on the Bathroom light. If you turn on the bedroom light, bedbugs run for cover. The bathroom light (or a hallway light) lets YOU see, but is not quite enough to send them running so fast.

There on the top blanket were bedbugs, running around very fast. Usually they are slower, but heat makes them more energetic. So I got some tissue and pinched them up in it, and threw that in the toilet (move fast, you have to in order to catch them before they hide). I got six in the first wad.

Got some more tissue and lifted the sheets apart – more bedbugs. I caught another few there, and then lifted the covers far enough to see some beside my husband. I went to his side of the bed and lifted the blankets and sheets beside him and caught some there also.

Threw two wads of them – the catch was pretty light, we have been battling these things and there aren’t very many of them anymore, many beds have FAR MORE.

So about an hour later I did it again – turned on the bathroom light and went hunting. Found a few more.

The next night I found five on the first exposure, and none afterward, though I checked twice more later in the night.

What I learned is that some time between midnight and 3 or 4:00 am, you can go hunting for bedbugs under an indirect light, and catch a lot of them. We flush them in the toilet so they can’t come back. Doing so really diminishes the numbers, and you sleep better that night for the rest of the night.

We’ve also learned that they reduce even more if you vacuum the ENTIRE carpet in your bedroom (and other places in the house if you have them in other rooms), especially under the bed.

Kevin and I have bought a bed frame from WalMart – the kind that is designed to have the mattress directly on it without a box spring. It makes me want to cry, we actually have a box spring, not just a box, and this will also make the mattress somewhat less comfortable, but it should help reduce the bedbugs enough to make ti worth it. We are scheduling someone to take the old mattress to the dump, and have to wait until then to swap out, we have no place to put the old mattress.

Someone else discovered that if you use a Lint Roller, you can loosen the end, so you know where the end of the tape is (so you don’t have a mess of bugs there that interfere with taking it off when you are done), and then you just bop the bugs near that loosened end. When you get a lot on there, you risk losing them if you don’t trap them better, so you take the end that you loosened, and fold it OVER the bugs. Then use the spot next to that to stick up some more. Keep folding it over the bugs you catch once you have enough on the roller.

You can use Duct tape the same way. Right off the roll, as much as you need at one time.

I don’t know yet what the end is, but the battle is ON. I am researching herbs that might be an asset if the linens are washed in them. So far the commercial solutions are all stupidly ineffective. The ones for bedbugs are LESS effective than the ones for fleas.

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.

UPDATE!

I’ve learned more about Bedbugs.

We moved into the back bedroom which did NOT have bedbugs. Slept there for SIX WEEKS. During that time, we dusted our bad, and hoped for the best. Based on reported life cycles, we should have been able to wait them out, and go back with them all dead, right?

After that, I moved back one evening. We made the bed from freshly washed linens, and I crawled in. The Bedbugs crawled OUT and were ALL OVER ME within 10 minutes (mostly tiny ones, but a few big daddies). I got out, shook myself off, made sure there were no bedbugs going with me, and went back to the other bedroom.

How does any bug survive for six weeks without food? They are cannibalistic, and the ones you do NOT see will always outnumber the ones you DO see. And the eggs can last for an incredibly long time, and still hatch and live for a few weeks just on the hatch… like chicks can live for several days, up to a week after birth without eating, those bedbugs can live even longer, who knows how.

We threw out our bed, and our recliners, which also had bedbugs in them. Sigh.

We bought a new mattress, and new recliners.  We bought inexpensive ones, it was all we could do.

We carpet cleaned the bedroom floor. All over. Twice.

We then SPRAYED the carpet. We opened the window, turned on a fan in the other window so the air would circulate, and sprayed it with Hotshot. Raid also works.

We did that TWICE. Both times we just sprayed, shut the door, and then went out to dinner while the room deodorized from fresh air movement.

We bought new sheets. We threw the old ones away. It was summer, sheets were all we were using.

We then moved back into our bedroom. It was BLESSEDLY Bedbug free.

We sprayed the floor before we put our new recliners in, but within a few days I was being bit in my new recliner. So we tipped it over, and sprayed it underneath, and then went out to dinner. When we came back it didn’t stink anymore, so we tipped it back up and went on with life.

Had to do that one more time… one more batch of bedbug bites in my chair, but this time, they stopped and didn’t come back.

Two months of no bedbugs. Fall has come, and I need a blanket on my bed. They have been in the closet up high, and they WERE used on the bed last winter. But that was SIX MONTHS ago. Surely not…

We have tiny bedbugs coming from the blanket! So we throw the blanket and the sheets into the wash, and learn a great thing.

When bedbugs are WELL ESTABLISHED, washing them helps some, but won’t get rid of them. When they are NOT, and you ONLY have bedbugs on top of the whole bed, washing will get them out. It doesn’t kill them exactly, it mostly just WASHES them out and down the drain.

We use HOT WATER to wash (kills more of them), and we dry the bedding until it is COMPLETELY DRY.

You HAVE to do it weekly, and you HAVE to do ALL THE BEDDING. And it is EXPENSIVE  you see it in your water bill, and in your power bill. To the tune of $40 per month or more for ONE BED, for both bills.

We learned that bedbug EGGS can survive up to a year if they are in a climate where they do not dessicate, which is why Humid Southern climates have more problems with them.

We learned that they multiply three times as fast in the summer. They can then multiply faster than you can pick them. You can almost get ahead in the winter.

We learned that a can of Raid out kills ANY kind of bedbug specific chemical killer, including bombs. We think bombs are a waste of money. One can of Raid or Hotshot will kill on contact, and protect that surface for a week or two afterward. You have to be careful NOT to breathe the stuff any more than absolutely necessary, but IT WORKS.

We learned that if you want them REALLY GONE, you have to spray the floor, spray the mattress and any other bed parts, and THEN either throw away your sheets and blankets and replace them, OR treat them. Yes, we have a method.

When we Raid or Hotshot a bedroom, we do it in phases. Takes several days, but is worth it. First the carpet, then the mattress bottom, then the mattress top.  Each time you spray and run, and close the door, then leave the house with windows open and fans blowing.

To treat blankets or sheets, put them into a large garbage bag. Spray them and then close the bag and put it in the shed or the garage, where it can’t gas anyone. Wait three days, and take the bedding out and hang it somewhere to air out. Then launder well in HOT water.

We learned that a mattress WITHOUT places to hide bedbugs is better – we bought one that is stitched completely smooth, no piping, no folds for the critters to hide or lay eggs in. And we learned that a Boxspring, or Bed Box will ALWAYS conceal complete TOWNS of Bedbugs that you can’t see, so we don’t use a boxspring or anything like it anymore.

Just about the time you think you have it all done, something happens. Your family comes to visit. And of course, you already gave THEM bedbugs, so they bring bedbugs with them now. And you have ONE THING you can do.

Wash the bedding  in HOT WATER immediately after they leave (if they are there more than TWO NIGHTS, you need to wash the bedding every two nights). You can also SPRAY THE FLOOR if they slept on the floor.

And keep the kids OUT OF YOUR RECLINERS, they’ll drop bedbugs there! In our house, the recliners are for the grownups.

A Word About Dirty Laundry…

We don’t HAVE bedbugs there, and we NEVER DID. But if your kids (or you), throw clothing on the floor, your CLOTHES will get infested. If you put them into the dresser after they’ve been on the floor, your DRESSER will get infested. I have some ideas on how to battle that, but no real instructions.

Keeping a clean house REALLY DOES make a difference here. Those bugs are SO HARD to get rid of, and if you can’t keep things picked up and orderly, you fight WAY HARDER to get rid of them.

We have always had two laundry baskets, one for the lights, and one for the darks, in our bedroom. The dirties go IN THERE, and not on the floor. It was SUCH a relief to not have bedbugs all through my clothes. It would have taken SO MUCH longer to eradicate them.

When we were raising our children, each one had their OWN laundry basket, and dirty clothes went THERE. Theoretically, anyway, they weren’t always tidy children, but at least they had the STRUCTURE so they COULD be.

It has been more than a month since the last bedbug sighting, but I still cringe at every itch, and I dread finding that they’ve been setting up house where I could not see them. I am sleeping peacefully though.

Which reminds me… Zyrtec DOES stop the itching. If you have to wait until you can tackle the work of ousting them from your house, Zyrtec can help you to survive. But keep picking them in the night. Otherwise you’ll sleep, and they’ll breed. Zyrtec can deceive you into thinking they are not as active.

This IS War, and I HAVE to win.