Good Evening all,

So I, like many people here, cant sleep because of the fear of having bedbugs in my dwelling (for me its an apartment). I moved in here on the first of this month, so not too long, and havent really had a good nights rest in a long while. Just a few moments ago, I was able to find a bug in and have something to compare it to. However I am unsure if this is a bedbug or not, and any insight is greatly appreciated.

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We discovered them in August 2016 and hastily reacted with little knowledge. Well intended Internet advisors/commenters found elsewhere apparently dispensed poor advice, if I can assume the advice here is good. We live in a single dwelling in the middle of nowhere. We have four bedrooms, four children (one infant). We don't quite make enough to make ends meet monthly, so the bugs have placed tremendous hardship on us in all the typical ways plus financial. We assumed we brought them home from work. We both work in a school, the same attended by our school aged children, and bed bug hitchikers are spotted there all the time, of course. When we first discovered the bugs, they were in our living room recliners, where my husband sleeps at least half of every night before moving up to our bed. Our bed was infested as well, of course. Having back/hip trouble during pregnancy that recliners relieved somewhat, I'd been sleeping in our living room for months when we found them. So we purged all our living room furniture and most of our bedroom stuff. Even the curtains went from those rooms. The rooms have hard wood floors, and we sprayed down our bed frame, mattress, and boxspring with an alcohol solution. We bought a mattress encasement and flung DE all over the place. We made our own interceptors under the frame wheels with Vaseline. The clutter in our bedroom was unbelievable. My husband had a "pile" of clothes at the foot of the bed that was about 6'x8' and various smaller stashes of clothes and things around the room as well. Upon inspecting the other rooms, we found a few fecal stains on one kid's sheet, but couldn't find the actual harborages in his room. We had JUST moved our two middle children together into a new bed in a different room to make room for the baby. We found nothing in those two rooms. We put mattress encasements on all the mattresses except the baby crib. I couldn't find one that size. I also couldn't find one for the box springs of our bed, so we made some with two layers of heavy plastic drop cloth and Gorilla Tape. We trimmed the "clear" bedrooms' baseboards with DE, just in case, and really sprayed down the one bed with fecal stain on the sheets with the alcohol spray. We laced the bed with DE as well. Months passed, and the baby was born. Keeping the children from helping them spread has been impossible. I've told them. I've freaked out on them. I've threatened their lives, practically, but so help me I find their shoes, clothes, backpacks, toys, blankets left around and then moved around nearly every day. I've found a few fecal marks on the baby's sheets lately, but again can't find any bugs. I've sprayed it down and put a mattress encasement I found online. I put interceptors under the crib legs. Nothing so far there, but she's up 3 or 4 times every night to nurse. How to keep any activity down between the two of us is just out of the question at this point. So 8 months into this mess, here's what I've got. My bedroom is still covered in dust, but mostly bare. My husband is the only one who has slept there durning this time. I've been afraid to move from my spot, since everyone advises to stay put. Hubby reports no bug activity at all in our room, but he doesn't pay attention or have any interest in fighting this war. He doesn't want the bugs here, of course, but he does nothing to fight them. When I've needed his help, he takes far too long to engage (days or even weeks). In fact, he questions everything I've attempted to do to eradicate the problem. He's also a baby about how I've continued to sleep in the living room, where we also have not seen evidence since August. Hubs is a bit of a hoarder, so the de-cluttering is very upsetting for him. I honestly almost left him over the disaster in our bedroom. I am sure that is the only reason the clothes aren't back on the floor. That had been a fight with him for over 16 years! But the one kid's bedroom that had the evidence 8 months ago has been recently found infested like our room had originally been. No one in our house has a reaction to the bites, and that bed, a wooden loft bed with a staircase, built-in drawers, dresser, and bookshelf, was impossible to maintain, apparently. We just threw it out and burned it. I was devistated to find so many. We put another encasement on his mattress, puffed cimexa around the room (only recently discovered the product), bought a simple bed frame that we could place in interceptors and decluttered his room (again). I'm only now reading bedbugger's way of dealing with these things, so I've unknowingly gone against many suggestions. But here I am. We don't have the money to hire a PCO, but my mother in law has offered to loan us money. This is another bill we can't afford to pay, but we can't afford to keep buying furniture either. There's nothing like robbing Peter to pay Paul! I've read so many horror stories, I don't know how I will trust any pro I call. As far as I know the local pest control guys don't know tons about this. But they claim they do. And there are only a couple in this area anyway. We have a nicer, large house for the area, so service people around here have had a tendency to see dollar signs that aren't here when I've asked them out. Meanwhile, how do you control the spread during treatment when you're fighting this battle alone with careless people? Anyway, thanks to anyone who took the time to read all this. I'm hoping just telling the story will lift some of the burden.

Ok, We've recently had a Bed Bug Infestation in our house, which, we bought pesticides to remove these god-awful creatures, but nope!, that didn't do diddly squat to these hardy creatures.

I went into my room tonight and went to sleep, in my bed, a few minutes after i felt a stingy-itchy sensation on the bottom of my thigh..

The dreaded.

Breakfast, Lunch and dinner bites...

I look around and find a small nymph around L1-L3, i couldn't tell because after i saw it, i squashed it to death with my index finger and thumb.

I went out into the living room and started to cry.. I just wish these damn bugs never existed... like they were never there....

I'm thinking about getting a heat treatment.

House :
2 Bedroom, 1 Bathroom, with basement and Attic, (both of which are not in use with beds)

Do you think they might be coming from my neighbors?, since i live in a single house with my grandmother, and my two dogs, do you think they may have been transfered from the neighbors house in some way?, could someone have had brung them over to us?

Also, I believe the original cause of the infection was..

Our nextdoor neighbor gave us two matresses, which looked innocent on the outside.
Once i started getting bites and seeing the bed bugs in my bed, i went upstairs and looked at the matresses, and they. had TONS. Of bedbugs on them.

We burned them the next day, this was in sept-oct of 2016, and these damned bugs are still not gone...

Should i get my house heat treated?

It's been 11 months. 11 months since we beat the little beasts. And this morning, my husband found one alive and looking well fed on our couch pillow. No one has any bites that we noticed but last time I was really the only one with a reaction. Could it be this dude is from the last round or did we have the disatrous luck of getting them again? Do we have to do this all over again?????!!!! We now have a baby, I can't even imagine keeping him away from the baseboards and furniture all the time after we spray. I know it says it's safe after so many hours but it can't be that safe. What are the odds it's just one? I am so upset they're back and overwhelmed by the amount we have to do now to get them gone.

My husband is a salesman and goes into peoples homes to speak to them. Back in December he was exposed to bed bugs and tried to be thorough in heating his clothing and such, but at least one or two still managed to make it into our home.

He was suspicious during that time because he believed himself to have bite marks. I never showed any reactions. We didn't fully understand how to locate them at that time and looked in the wrong places. 7 weeks after exposure, an adult ran onto my leg, I caught it.

We were heat treated on January 31st. Every room in our house was treated for about 6 hours of 140 degree temperatures.

We are concerned because when we came back that night we did not have a cover yet over the bed and were worried that if a dying bed bug fed from us, it could rejuvenate or something.

It has been 12 weeks now and we have found no evidence of living bugs in this time. No shells, spots, bugs, or anything in the climb traps. Tonight we found what could be one of the bugs that was killed in the heat treatment (not sure if it's a shriveled bed bug or some sort of larva of something else), I was surprised we didn't find it before, but I was recently vacuuming and perhaps knocked it out of a crevice.

Concerns/observations:

Ever since the heat treatment, my husband and I have had skin reactions. However we also discovered in all of this that we'd had a pretty bad carpet beetle problem that we had no idea about. I didn't discover them until I looked around my desk and discovered their little hairy shells. I was able to find them every few inches around the baseboards as well. The heaters they used blew heat to circulate through the house and these little shells are so light, I have no doubt that they got blown all over the place (there were a lot in the carpet). We did a test on my husband where we rubbed a carpet beetle shell on him and he got a reaction that was the same as the other reactions we had begun to have after the heat treatment.

The only difference is that he did not get any large, temporary hives like we both had experienced after the heat treatment.

I started taking daily allergy medicine and have not had a hive since then, but my husband continues to get the occasional hive. He did not react with hives prior to the heat treatment.

My cat also itches himself sometimes. I took him to the vet and he did have an ear infection that was treated but he still scratches around his face two or three times per day that I can see.

What are your insights? When can we consider ourselves in the clear?

I want to have guests overnight on the 20th of May, that will be at the 15 week and a few days mark. We plan to steam clean the carpets before this and also get an ionizing air purifier to try to remove all the carpet beetle hairs.

Is it safe to have people over? We do not want to accidentally give someone bedbugs if there is still anything living here. When can we feel safe again? I wish I could put this in the 'Success story' section, but we just don't know when we can call it a success.

Thank you.

We have been battling bed bugs since January. The PCO has had to come back over 5 times because I have spotted just one every couple of weeks. Anyway, we haven't seen anything in the inceptors or elsewhere in about 2 weeks. Of course, I know this does not mean we are in the clear yet.

My mother in law, who babysits our son at our home 3 days a week just told me yesterday that she now has bed bugs at their house. UGHHH...So my question is what can I do to ensure nothing from their house is spread to ours (in the most loving way possible)? I'm not sure if she picked them up from us but I have to make sure they are not reintroduced (hell, we are still battling them ourselves!) She is spending the night at our place one day this week with our son while we are out of town. What can I do or suggest?

I seriously feel like this will never end!!!

Hate to break it you, but any "success stories" you read are false hope. Have bed bugs? Congratulations. Unless you get rid of all of -- and I mean ALL OF -- your possessions, this is now the rest of your natural born life.

Been trying, for about 8 months, to get rid of bed bugs. I have done everything I've been told to do. Got rid of my luggage, 3 purses, a couch, a bed stand, a mattress, all said mattress padding and sheets, at least 8 pillows. Washed and double-bagged everything that I wanted to keep. (Big mistake--should have tossed all my clothing, books, electronics, dishes, etc., but I honestly can't afford that right now.) I have had 5 professional treatments. I have sprayed every day for 30 days now on my own. My bedroom is so coated in diatomaceous earth it looks it snowed inside. Like, seriously. Over two grand in replacements, treatments, repairs, sprays, supplies.

Still getting bit. Still seeing them. Found 5 tonight during my nightly spray.

Give up. Stop taking advice on this forum. It will never end. Unless you can afford to get rid of everything you own (and have the bravery to throw out all your books, pictures, other sentimental objects) this is your life now. You're carrying bed bugs. For life.

Sorry to be pessimistic, but this is, in all honesty, the truth. Trying, right now, to save enough money to toss and replace all I own. Just getting out of college, so I'm not tremendously optimistic.

Life sucks. Bed bugs forever.

There are 2 of us in the apartment I live in and the landowners live upstairs. I heard my wife mention they were going around and the next thing you know, my wife was discovering little bugs on the arm of her loveseat (we have both a loveseat and and standard sized couch).
For a couple of weeks, neither of us was sure they were bed bugs (I'm a total novice at this). No specimens were kept until 2 small specimens about 3 weeks ago. Since then, I have been doing a lot of researching. I started identifying them about 2 weeks ago. In the past week, I have killed about 10 adults and 1 nymph in the living room area and one on the outside of the bedroom door. My wife has a habit of napping on the couch and we caught a gorged one on her the other day. I just woke up in bed and went to scratch my leg and discovered a possible specimen feeding on me, but I was silly enough to grab it and, in the dark dropped it.
We have 1 income. We're behind on rent and, even though we live in one of those states that says the tenant isn't liable, they flat out refused to help. I'm afraid to push the issue, because we are sure to see eviction due to the back rent alone. It doesn't matter if we won a court case we could never afford if we're on the streets during the process.
Most likely, public transportation was the culprit that brought them in, but with the epidemic going on in this country, who knows?
At any rate. My wife has been a bit of a hoarder and we have clutter and clothes scattered about the apartment. I finally got her to get a small shop vac, some DE, a spray and a few traps yesterday. Until then, all I could do is kill live bugs and spray rubbing alcohol all over the place (we don't smoke, so the fire hazard is slightly reduced).
We simply can't afford an inspection, never mind a treatment and I know it's been a good 8 weeks at least, so guaranteed a good infestation has already taken hold.
We don't have them yet, but I will look into covers for the couches and the bedding. We need to replace the mattress bugs or not. It's a broken spring mattress.
The concern I have is, we have a lot of books and electronics. My wife has knitting material, among other things that we would like to keep. We can't afford new dishes. Simply put, we can't afford to replace anything. We don't have the money, time or patience to cook every single thing individually in special ovens.
Plus, there's the fear that the bugs will head upstairs. If that happens, we're basically out on the streets.
I'm still very new to this whole thing (we won a battle with cockroaches in another state, thanks to a filthy neighbor, and that seemed so much easier to deal with).
Is there any chance we can DIY and come out of this with both our sanity and our stuff, without professional help or are we just rowing up a creek without a paddle?

Now, iirc I made a thread here a while back where I posted a picture of a bed bug and it was identified as such. After a while, the bites randomly stopped, but over the past month I've been being bitten/having run-ins with these pests again. Just the day before yesterday I pulled an all-nighter and found a bedbug crawling inside my shirt and biting me. As of right now, it is 1:30AM and I have a bite on the underside of my arm. I got up to inspect and found the culprit crawling on my shirt and I promptly drowned it (and the shirt) in the tub. I can't sleep and I'm sure the second I lay down I'll be attacked again.

Money is very tight and there is no money available for a PCO, just like last time. It would difficult to get my grandmother, who's roof I live under, to acknowledge the issue anyway; she doesn't want to hear it. I'm the only one who seems to respond to bites, which now appear almost immediately after the bed bugs bites me. I have literally no way to get this house treated, and I'm sure the infestation will only continue to worsen.

This post is partially to vent and ask for suggestions for keeping these things at bay. I was thinking of investing in some DE Earth, and duct tapping around my mattress, which is on the floor. But that sounds like wishful thinking..

I am at a stand still.
When i was younger living with my mom she got infested with bed bugs, pretty badly. Well we thought the issue was taken care of. I moved out and never had problems with bbs. Recently I have started to get bit, in the notorious line patterns, as well as my daughter. Searched up and down, could not find any bugs.
Now i would treat my house and such, but im nervous that mt kids are bringing these home on a nightly basis from the 2 family members who watch them during the day. 1 of the 2 houses they are watched at is pretty cluttered and would be nearly impossible to treat. The other isnt horrible. But i dont think either will be willing to properly treat them. I dont want to jerk my kids out of care of two family members who love and take good care of them, but I cant stann bbs. Wtf do i do? If i eridicate the bugs to my best and judt put the kids in the bath as soonas i get home, wouldthat work? Idk what to do 😣

Oh, also possibly moving so dont want to bring bugs if at all possible.

I have been reading this forum for a while now without posting so I thought I'd add my story.
Due to some unfortunate unforseen circumstances my entire family became homeless in June of last year. We outstayed our welcome at anybody/everybody's houses. We then we're forced to hop from crappy hotel to hotel because of festivals and events going on in our area. During this time I was still so naive. I thought bed bugs were a thing of the past like the plague. Lol I know! Never once did we find a bug or get bites or anything in any if the places we stayed for 6 months.
Fast forward to the end of November we finally save up and get an apartment. We move in with nothing but a ton of mostly dirty clothes we'd had stashed at people's houses. Almost immediately we notice the pattern bite marks. We even found a female bed bug my husband squashed and thought nothing more of it. Never did we think bed bugs. We actually thought flees because 1 place Wed stored clothes had a flee problem.
Then on day I was taking my son to the public library and it was closed, due to bed bugs! I thought huh so their real!? I looked it up & immediately knew. It had went from a few bites every once in a while to all of us getting bites every day. I was so disgusted to think of how long we've let this problem go on. After deciding on bed bugs we still didn't have proof so I put raid bed bug traps all over & found nothing. Then suddenly it seemed out of nowhere my husband was finding bugs frequently. (He wears alot of white shirts making it easier to spot them)
We think our neighbor may have bombed their apartment and that's why we suddenly had so many bugs. We washed & ziplocked everything etc etc all the standard things everyone seems to do to avoid spreading etc. Had a treatment 1 month ago & the only bugs were found in our living room but now tonight I found 1 on my mattress encasement. This situation makes me so anxious and upset I don't know how people get through it. I can't sleep i think of leaving everything behind but we don't have resources for that. If something doesn't change in the near future, eventually everyone will just have them and it will be the norm.

I have had bbs twice and ever since I follow the travel tips and am very careful when I come home to make sure nothing can escape from my luggage. I have been away for three days during which my daughter came home from a trip. I gave her strict instructions to seal up her suitcase in a contractors garbage bag that I had left for her at the front door and then leave it outside till I got home to help her deal with unpacking precautions. Also asked her to bag her purse and leave it in the kitchen. When she went to work she took her purse out of the bag and left the bag sitting open in the kitchen. We live in a very small apartment. Any spot is no farther than 16 feet away. So now I'm terrified that a possible bedbug climbed out of the bag that she had her purse in and now having followed a trail of C02 to my daughters room, has set up home. I am so upset with her. Am I just paranoid and irrational? How worried should I be? I'm so tired of always worrying about bedbugs. I'm always so careful but my daughter and huband just act so cavalier. Now while they go about their lives I get to spend a month checking the passive monitors and worrying constantly. Am I being unreasonable?

I posted on this forum two years ago when I caught bedbugs when I was subletting a room via craigslist in Austin. To sum up my story: I caught BB while traveling to the US in july 2015 and, despite all the precautions I took (throwing away my suitcase, my tablet, everything that couldn't go into the washing machine) brought them back to France in my apartment. I battled them for two months but despite the (lame/ineffective) PCO treatment, I still got bites. I moved out of the apartment and had to throw away ALL my belongings (just kept some photo albums that I put in the freezer -minus 21 celsius degrees- for several weeks). I lost all my money (paying for the PCO and the K9 canine team several times) and I lost literally everything I owned (cause in France theres' no vikane treatment, no packtite, nothing!). Then I had to ask my ex-husband if I could come under his roof for some months so I could gather some money to rent a new apartment and buy furniture. My move was a success, I didn't bring any bedbugs with me and the bites stopped. I didn't post a success story because I don't really consider a success the fact that I had to throw everything I owned and the fact that I'm broke since then...
Fast forward to now: my son and his father went on holidays on May 28, rented a house for the weekend and my son came back with bites all over his body! Needless to say that I freaked out. Especially cause my ex-husband is in denial and refuses to acknowledge that such monsters do exist. So he told me not to worry, that it was mosquitoes. Still, since then, my son wakes up every morning with 2 bites approximately and so do I. I tore the beds apart today looking for live ones or fecal spots but found nothing. The bites are just like the bites I used to have when I was certain to have bedbugs and it's killing me. I can't call the woman with the dogs because I need the money to pay the bills and whatever I do, it won't work because my ex-husband will refuse to treat his apartment and to do all the hard work you're supposed to do when you have bedbugs...If this is bedbugs, I'm screwed because even if i have my apartment treated, my ex-husband (who is likely to have brought BBs into my aparment) won't do the same so he'll reintroduce BBs in my apartment through my son's clothes/ stuff.
I am so scared, I'm barely recovering from being traumatized by BBs in 2015, it can't happen again!
I just needed to vent and I know no one can do anything to help me but at least I needed to tell my story...

I've posted before, but I live in a house with two floors and a basement. My family - consisting of me and my grandmothers - live on the bottom floor. There are three bedrooms down here, and I have had run-ins with bed bugs in each. I also previously lived upstairs on the 2nd floor, where the bites first began, so I can confidently say that - after dealing with this off and on for a year and a half - we probably have a pretty sizeable infestation.

My grandmothers are 60 and 81, and they have made it very clear that they don't see it as an issue, considering they don't see the bugs and likely don't react to bites. To them, the bed bugs don't exist. And considering I'm a college student and my family overall is pretty much struggling in general, there is literally no chance for an exterminator being hired. 0%.

I react to the bites pretty much instantly and I've been losing sleep because the bites have gotten frequent. I plan on leaving the house - with proper preparation - but I want to wait until the end of Summer, at least. Is there any way to keep them from at bay in my room, at least? Just for 2 months, until I'm ready to go?

The bugs won. We have been defeated.

We put up a fight, spent all our money. Sprays, powders, sticky traps, professional heat treatments, professional residual sprays every seven days for several weeks....

Every time I start to feel like we can beat this, I discover another one somewhere. We were supposed to have the dog come and sniff tomorrow, it was our "all clear" test... I just found TWO live ones on the pillow I had been using. I was too confidant, I felt like they were gone and so did the pest control man. Therefore I skipped laundering my bedding for a few days... and, alas, there they were.

We have thrown everything away... I am serious, all the furniture in my house is gone except the kitchen table and chairs. No beds, No dressers, No couch or chairs, No end tables, No rugs.... just nothing... Our family consists of my husband, me, and our four children, one of whom is a baby.

We are moving out in 30 days with nothing except a few trash bags full of our clothes, a computer, and the few toys my kids own that could be washed in hot bleach water. I had to toss out so much stuff. We are getting a new apartment and will have nothing to put in it and literally no money after we pay the deposit on it.

Oh, and get this, I have been washing our clothing and towels and such and bagging them to move immediately after they dry... and just moments ago my dryer finally quit working.

And I cannot be more serious when I say we have no money... Like, none.

Hello everyone,

I originally posted my story in the existing thread from last year (http://bedbugger.com/forum/topic/help-found-a-dead-bed-bug-and-terrified?replies=17#post-134195). Per recommendation from the kind oldtimer cilecto, I am opening a new thread for information sharing, discussion and also as a sort of a diary of our situation in case it becomes any worse and we need to take more serious actions.

To start with, I will copy my original post and then add updates...

My husband and I live in Central NJ, in a new townhome development. We have never had any problems with pests (well, perhaps, a few ants last summer, which we took care of quickly). Both of us are clean freaks and extremely neat. Yesterday we got a delivery of a new bedroom set and, as I was wiping the drawers of the chest drawer set prior to placing our stuff there, I found... yes, a dead BED BUG! (it was dead and dry, but nonetheless - a BED BUG!!!)

Both, my husband and I, were in shock and mortified. Having heard plenty of the bed bug epidemic in the Northeast (originally, we are not from here), we too are always on alert - just like the author of the thread describes - we are careful when traveling or even after visiting friends - all clothes get thoroughly washed, luggage inspected and always isolated in the basement. I don't know how I even spotted this monster - I guess with some sixth sense, I don't know... It is definitely dead and dry, but it COMPLETELY matches the description and pictures from the internet! It IS a bed bug!

We saved it in a ziplock bag and contacted the furniture people right away (had to leave a message for them - waiting for their response today). I spent all night wiping down the insides of the new set (bed frame, night stand and 2 chests of drawers) with alcohol, panicking and feeling completely helpless. It felt like a timebomb had just been delivered to us.

I've read plenty about bed bugs last year when they started talking about them in the news. And a couple of my friends even confessed to having bugs in the past. I am horrified!!! I too didn't sleep well last night, even though we slept in another bedroom - the room with new furniture is still absolutely empty - just the new furniture there.

What are the chances of us getting bed bugs? Can alcolhol really take care of things in case there are bed bug eggs in the creases of this furniture? What should we do next? I wiped the drawers inside and all around - bottoms of the drawers on the outside too. And, btw, there was some white stuff - like greyish-white dust spots on the bottom of the drawers - that wouldn't be bed bug eggs, would it? (I need to read up on this next!)

My husband and I are truly in a "crisis mode". I have a feeling the furniture people won't do anything for us. Moving out this furniture now is almost as scary as leaving it there (it came pre-assembled - except the bed frame - and had to go through the entire house to get to the bedroom - we paid for in-house delivery and package removal with that too)... and, omg... what if they carried the bed bug stuff with the packaging all over the house on the way out? What should we do? The new furniture is drenched in alcohol now... But what else? I know that bed bugs live long and can come back to live even after they seem dead and dry... This is hellish beyond description. Could someone please advise?

I have been anonymously reading the forums since January, but finally created an account today. Hello!

Our bed bug journey started in January. The typical bites, blood spots,and finally finding a live bugger...then taking down my tufted headboard and finding the Las Vegas strip for bed bugs. I should have started charging rent. SO many in every conceivable stage of development.

I tried DE, chemicals, vacuuming, panic-stricken throwing away of things, bagging, laundering, traps on the bed legs. I thought I finally had them isolated to our couches, my husband often sleeps down there. We tossed one couch and wrapped the other up, threw in a chemical "trap", taped the hell out of it and didn't open it for 4 weeks. They were gone!

I thought.

We moved to a new house 4 weeks ago, approximately 8 weeks after our last bedbug sighting. Guess what I found crawling on me while watching t.v. tonight. Go on, you'll never guess. Not in a million years.

Okay. You guessed. A bed bug. Commence the panicked upending of the couch, whipping out the flashlight, and there they are. Maybe half a dozen all cozy in one of the seams. My heart stopped and if my head could have exploded it would have. What an M. Night Shyamalan twist.

So we begin again. It's only been 6 months but it feels like a nerve-wracking eternity. I need some words of wisdom and strength as we start this cycle over once again. Do chunk the couch? Re-bag it? I just unpacked out entire house...do I go through and spray every item we own with rubbing alcohol?

Light a match and walk away? Live under a bridge? No?

Right now I'm going to bed because I can't deal with this at the moment. But where do I start tomorrow?

I think I just have to get it all out because there is no one to talk to outside of my husband and I'm losing my mind. It all started over a year ago. I woke up to something crawling on me. Much to my horror, it was a bedbug. I work in healthcare, and have been paranoid about finding one and there it was. I ended up with 3 bits, severe reaction, purple in color and itchy! We had an inspection done, they found no signs of infestation and only confirmation was because we had the bug. We dried the clothes and sprayed Temprid throughout the house and all the furniture etc. Encased the bed. Found 6 dead bugs after this. Sprayed again. Never saw them again. No more bites (only had the 3 anyway). Fast forward 11 months. My husband finds a bed bug crawling on a throw pillow in the living room. We spray again. We find a dead bug by our sliding door. One month later, I have one bite me and crawling on my son and I on the couch. We tear our house a part, throw most of our things away. Dry everything, bag it all up in plastic again. Spray Temprid. Live out of plastic. Traps under beds, carpet tape around beds, beds encased away from walls yada yada all the things you have to do. My husband even ripped up the carpet and found where there had been multiple bugs but they were already all dead. 2 weeks later I found a semi live bed bug in my toilet. Then same night I find a semi-live bug just laying on the floor in the bathroom. The next day, a dead bug in my children's bath TUB. And a dead bug in my sliding door crack between the wall and glass (maybe a spider took it there?).

I'm confused because there's no bugs caught in our traps. We always find them during the day. They were gone for 11 months. We've never had the signs of infestation other than what we found when we ripped up the carpet, but that was around 7 bugs or less there. Bites have totaled 4 for me. 0 for my hisband or two children (I understand not everyone reacts but my daughter is highly allergic to mosquitoes and my son sleeps between my husband and I...I find it unlikely they'd skip us for him. They've been found in almost every room in our home but in random places. It sounds like an infestation when you say they're everywhere but there is no evidence. No fecal stains. No blood. No bites. No bugs in traps. It's always during the daytime never at night. I scour my house at night...we sleep on white sheets to see blood and stains and bugs Better. NOTHING.

We did have bats shortly before it started. But they're gone for over a year and a half now. We do have birds. Although, a raccoon moved in and ate them ALL (we had them in the attic and the front porch and bushes, all eaten). So we are unfortunately having animal problems. I can't figure out how to upload photos and I can't get any that are detailed enough for anyone to tell me if these are bat bugs, bird bugs, or bed bugs. My job and our house mean it could be any of them.

It just seems like they're never going to be gone and that we have a big problem without figuring out where the problem is because you'd think there would be signs of them SOMEWHERE. Instead we have random bugs alive or dead pop up all over the house. Could they be coming out of vents from the attic? Could they be randomly all over bc of clothing somehow? (We take off downstairs and put on clean from new bags upstairs). It's just mind boggling.

How do you ever know you're truly free of them? Will we always be in fear of finding one randomly somewhere??!!!!?? Will we be able to beat this ourselves? I don't have tons of money for heat or gas or freezing and a guy spraying isn't going to do anything different than we do. This is a nightmare.

So i moved out here about 6 months ago...i'd just recently dropped out of college, left home at 19, and was ready to turn a new leaf. Me and my now fiance moved into our little 2br apartment, ready to start our lives together.

At first, aside from some highly unsanitary and argumentive downstairs neighbors, everything was okay. We made it work.

About a month after we settled in, the itching began. At least, for me it did. We figured it was just mosquitos and tried to ignore it.

Weeks go by, it gets worse, and eventually we see one of those goddamn mythical blood-eaters frolicking across our sheets. We kill it with some tissue and flush it, unaware of the evil beneath our sheets.

After 3 months, our neighbors move out, and our landlord informs us that, yeah, they were the patient zero of the bedbug infestation.
Soon after we started saving up for bug bombs and sprays, etc, and we started our own personal war against these things...

I stopped sleeping in our bed last month, and it's really driving me and my significant other apart.
But lucky him, he doesnt feel the bites. I, on the other hand, break out in welts and scratch until i bleed.

I'm about to sleep in our bathtub as i type this...they've already spread to the living room couch and my arm looks like a crimson pin-cushion.

We're looking into another apartment, and discussing just throwing away everything: our bed, our tables, our blankets and clothes, the sheets, the pillows...everything.
We can barely afford to feed ourselves as it is, but starving is better than being food.

This whole being eaten alive thing is driving me to the edge :'(

I'm looking for anyone else who may have purchased a mattress from Sleep Country Canada and then got bed bugs.

My Wife and I purchase a mattress from Sleep Country and within two days of delivery she started to show signs of bed bug bites.

It has taken a lot of time and money to get ride of the infestation and we are now looking to sue Sleep Country. If anyone has had a similar experience I would love to connect with you. Please message me or reply to this thread.

Thanks