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[thebedbugexperiment]

(2/2) mattress about 3-5 months ago. The bug bites went away about 2 days later and didn't come back again. I woke up this morning and i had one bite on my back but i never got another again. PLEASE HELP, I'M SO PARANOID. I'm thinking about hiring a professional to check it out because I know almost nothing about bed bugs besides that they're ugly and I hate bugs. What do you think about that? Thank you!

How are you doing lately with all of this?

[thebedbugexperiment]

Well, now that the bites have stopped~

I've still got about 1/2lb of the Diatomaceous Earth left (for those just catching up, after months of several super-itchy bites a night we realized we had these 'mythical' things called bed bugs and have been eradicating them from our home for the past few weeks) and I originally had no idea what to do with the stuff! I know it's organic, that it's food-safe and can be used on potato bags to keep the little flies away.. but I've seriously got a LOT left! So it turns out this white, dried, kelp in powder form will kill:: Bed bugs, ear mites, flies, fleas, chiggers, head lice, genital crabs (yikes) and several other pests with hard outer shells by dehydration. But it ALSO can be used as:: -An all-organic colon health supplement, by both humans and corresponding pets. -a de-worming agent in dogs and cats. -a joint health supplement in people, when taken in small doses. -a mold repellent in bathrooms, kitchens and other moist areas of the home. And tons of other stuff, totally findable all over google! I've personally been using it:: in my kitties' ears to stop the wretched scratching that they cause and as a joint and colon health to help my post-pregnancy ankles and messed-up inner organs (intestines, colon, stomach) from being pushed around for 9mo's! I feel so much better not being bit by bed bugs, not having to watch my kittens suffer AND finally being able to poo without feeling like I'm going through labor all over again. THANK FUCKING GOD FOR DIATOMACEOUS EARTH. AND FUCK PEST CONTROL CUNT-FACES. They are as high-horsed and sadistic as an anethesiologist in a hospital delivery room.

[thebedbugexperiment]

It's been about a month now

since I've woken up with those horrible bumps all over my body. The BBB for Bed Bugs worked, but in the meantime I followed up on my mom's initial finding of Diatomaceous Earth, food-grade quality. BBB seems to work just fine, but it began giving my mom a headache after a few days' exposure, and the D/E doesn't. 

Also, since it's food-grade (and doesn't contain Pyrethins, a common flea-killer) I can spread it everywhere around my dog's bed, as well as put some in her ears for some organic ear mite removal! Not to mention feed it to her along with her dinner if she ever gets worms somehow since this D/E stuff will deworm your pets for you after a few uses, and doesn't hurt whatsoever!

Within the past month I've gotten a total of four bumps (bites) and have found two bugs, killed both. We've ordered a bed frame off amazon to keep the bed and box spring off the floor, and I plan to put traps on each of the feet of the bed. I know I have to keep the bed away from the wall for this to be effective, It just sucks hella bad since our room is so small that in doing this, there is no more room to keep anything other than the baby's bed and a single dresser. I am truly hoping these measures will prove effective but all in all the rules are fairly simple- one bite means one bug, which is moving into it's next phase. In order for me to turn our home into the once untainted bed bug-free home it once was, these measures must be kept and withheld until not one person in our home has been COMPLETELY bite-free for 12 months. At least. By then my son will be almost 15mo's old, we will probably be living some place else, and I will STILL be in fear of these bugs. Forever looking, searching and checking every surface everywhere for a little bloodsucking bastard to upturn my life once again.

[thebedbugexperiment]

bed bug symptoms

I think it's weird to have 6 bug bites in a shape of an circle. Dont you?

[thebedbugexperiment]

HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN SINCE YOU POSTED THIS?! Hun, these are bed bugs! I was convinced for WEEKS I was being attacked by some new kind of spider, looked up bed bugs but never found any. The sitch got worse until I finally found one- don't wait until you do! If this has been happening longer than a week or so, read my blog and begin saving your sanity!

Try to pretend you’re not completely turned on.

[thebedbugexperiment]

HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN SINCE YOU POSTED THIS?! Hun, these are bed bugs! I was convinced for WEEKS I was being attacked by some new kind of spider, looked up bed bugs but never found any. The sitch got worse until I finally found one- don't wait until you do! If this has been happening longer than a week or so, read my blog and begin saving your sanity!

BEDA The 8th: OUCH

Today I was super duper productive (read: not really)… I got up in the morning and went to physical therapy (I have neck and head issues), I went back home and pretended to do shit, I actually fixed my bed so that it doesn’t squeak and then I put clean sheets on it, I took my friend to get her car fixed, and I watched a hell of a lot of scrubs. This is a fairly average day for me when I am not working… however, one this keeps getting in the fucking way of me doing ANYTHING: my legs. 

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[thebedbugexperiment]

Not mosquitoooos...

I keep getting bit...

The freaking mosquitos have gotten inside my house thanks to my brother leaving doors open… They have now attacked me and I keep itching myself… These vermin need to be destroyed.

[thebedbugexperiment]

Definitely not mosquitoes.

Seriously.

It would be wonderful if all, you know, 35 bug bites, could stop itching so I could freaking sleep.

Summer, I’m really beginning to envy you.

[thebedbugexperiment]

Just got bit again. On my love-handle, and my wrist. Yay me. Oh, then we found two. TWO bugs. Please smn. It's 2:34 a.m. I'm drinking coffee and starting the baby's laundry because I'm NOT going back to bed. This is my life now.. a 2 month-old baby, bed bugs, and forever consciousness. 

[thebedbugexperiment]

What Else Had They Infected by Now?

[This is my blog, my story, of how I am defeating bed bugs without the help and costs of a professional exterminator. Cont’d from “Remember that $300 Futon?”]

We still owed $100 on our first ever piece of furniture, and it's sitting out by the dumpster. People say all the time to not toss your infected furniture when you have bed bugs.. Those people obviously haven't suffered the psychological effect I did so far. The $300 'I didn't have to be throwing away like that' was so worth it when I believed it would rid me of the nightmares and paranoia of having bed bugs. I was squinting across the room at pieces of fuzz on the carpet afraid they would crawl toward me, I was checking everything I sat upon in public places, I was jumping at any other bug that DID crawl, jump, or fly even if I saw it outside a window. Bed bugs never, not once left my mind because even though I got rid of that dreaded, infected futon.. I didn't know where else they were hiding in my house.

My mom was researching too, at work, since she has access to a computer and the internet, as well as a coworker she had confided in. Together they found this stuff called Diatomaceous Earth, and sent me a link to some info about the stuff in a youtube video. I had never heard of it, didn't know how some powder crap could work, didn't have the patience to watch the video or read up on it, and dismissed that completely. But it gave me an idea- What an IDIOT.. why didn't I just look up how to kill these things on youtube?! I even have a tutorial account with tons of subscribers that got put on hold in this whole newborn-baby-having-bed bug-having process. I searched "how to kill bed bugs" and found a video with this man and woman with a bottle of powder they were using to cover their house and make perimeters around stuff. The guy claimed 1 bottle would do your house 4 times over, contained Diatomaceous Earth, would never become less effective as bed bugs cannot build immunity, only costs $15 per, and all you had to do was what he showed and it was guaranteed to work. No professional needed. Way too good to be true, but I was desperate. I got on the phone and begged my mom to front me $30 for 2 bottles (just to be sure), and order it for me. She complied. I don't know if it was the visible welting she had seen on her kids, the sound of my voice in desperation or that without having been bit, she could see how truly insane I was going, having to feed and care for my now 3-4wk old baby as well as every bed bug in my home.

In the meantime my bf and I tore apart our bedroom reloaded those squirt bottles of rubbing alcohol and treated our bedroom. We saturated. every. thing. The dressers, the drawers, the closets, all our clothes, the mattress, the box spring, the base boards along the wall, the carpet, anything that wasn't porous: metal, plastic, linoleum, marble, etc. Everything was drenched, soaked and sopping in rubbing alcohol. it didn't occur to me the fumes turned my home into a live bomb that could have been set off by simply static electricity until days later. But i didn't give a shit, that was the first night I went without a bed bug bite in almost 6 months.

[thebedbugexperiment]

Remember that $300 futon?

[This is my blog, my story, of how I am defeating bed bugs without the help and costs of a professional exterminator. Cont’d from “The beginnings of a purge”]

So I just had my baby, and had come home after a failed epidural and 7 stitches (ouch). I'm hard-headed and SWORE my child would never sleep with me in bed, so my bf slept in our bed in the bedroom, and I was spending the first week with the baby (we named him Asher) on the futon since he woke every hour to eat. He wasn't the only one. These horrid bugs did, too and I woke up almost every time with a new bite! By the time he was 2 weeks old, I had been bitten just so much. I was losing so much sleep. I was afraid to go to bed.. I couldn't sleep for fear of these things, I began having nightmares and total insomnia. I felt sick in the head, and so lost for a solution. I was convinced this was my new life, a new life with a newborn and bed bugs and it was only a matter of time before they began attacking my baby. I got so over it, I took the futon and put it in the spare room, and replaced some typical folding chairs for sporting events as our sitting arrangement in the living room and continued my constant cleaning. For the first month of Asher's life, I forever: cleaned house, nursed baby, changed baby, did laundry, bathed baby, bathed me, cooked, washed dishes, took out trash, nursed baby, changed baby, did laundry, cleaned house, did laundry again, then laid awake at night waiting to be eaten alive. I had moved back to my bed in the bedroom, and had Asher sleep in his swing. I was still being bitten while my bf remained untouched. I was reading about bed bugs on a daily/nightly basis trying to find SOME solution that didn't require a multi-hundred dollar consultation and professional treatment. We even signed a contract upon move-in with our apt. management that all bed bug and bat bug problems would be our own responsibility to report, forfeiting of deposit, or immediate dismissal of our lease. This meant having management cover the costs was null and void, unless I couldn't find a cheaper solution than our deposit ($775 even). I came across some random website claiming rubbing alcohol kills bed bugs on contact. I almost dismissed this idea, because it didn't promise me that they would be forever repelled. I welcomed it by the next night, ha ha. My mom, boyfriend, and I went to Walmart the next day and bought:: 2 squirt bottles, 3 91% rubbing alcohol containers and a bottle of Salty Watermelon UV vodka.

My bf and I went home, got drunk, and loaded up the spray bottles, and entered the forbidden spare bedroom. We started spraying and became utterly disgusted. They were crawling around everywhere! We sprayed, and sprayed, and tried to get every single fold and flap and sprayed again until our eyes watered and we couldn't breathe. We left the room and were at a loss of what to do.. I still owe $100 on this thing! Do we buy a cover trying to save it, or lose what we paid? We moved it to our back patio while we gave it consideration. This was the first piece of furniture we bought as a couple, in the first place we had together. Not to mention we hadn't even bought it completely yet! There has to be a way to save it, right? It was probably two weeks later, that I realized I could never sit on the thing without going into a paranoid hysteria again and we took it out to the dumpster. I will be making my next $50 payment on it, this coming month.

[thebedbugexperiment]

[10.28.13]What Does/Does NOT kill/repel/treat bed bugs + bites!

Updated!! I apologize for the previously confusing post, so I tried to organize what each of these are real solutions to when dealing with bed bugs.

For BITES:: (Before banishing me to hell, please keep in mind I had terrible allergic reactions to these bites, as did my brother, so this is what worked for US. My bf and mom on the other hand hardly showed for bites, and never itched.) --Calamine Lotion. On a scale 1/10, I would rate this as a 5. It was highly effective for a few minutes, but then proceeded to dry out my skin, make me smell like rust, and then when it wore off and would scratch, the dryness of the skin would get cut. So we had bed bug bites, as well as cat-like scratches all over. --Children's Benadryl Cooling Gel. 7/10, when allowed to dry and applied twice. This stuff was actually really nice as it made you feel instantly better with the cooling (menthol, or camphor, I believe) agent. It lasted anywhere between 1 and 5 hours. --Pure 100% Aromatherapy-grade Lavender Oil. 9/10, and I WISH I had listened to the person who suggested this when the bites FIRST appeared. It costs about $6 for .33oz on Amazon, and you don't even need a drop. Put a little smear over each bite, smell great and be welt AND itch-less for up to 24hrs. This stuff saved my ass, --Benadryl + claritin capsules/pills. 0/10. For some reason, these did not work for either of us. Simply made us too tired to stay awake, go to bed and get bit some more. Plus on my part, nearly dimished my breastmilk supply for my 3wk-old baby at the time.

AS A REPELLENT:: (Heads up, none of these worked. obviously. But this is what we tried for at least 2 wks, up to 5wks, over the 7mo time period we had bed bugs.) --Vitamin b1 supplements. Orally + ground and put around bed. --Deet and Citronella - containing insect/bug repellent, Off! brand for hiking. Sprayed everywhere. --Vitamin b12 supplements. Orally (supposedly downgrades the ability for bugs to smell the CO2 you release in your sleep). Also ground up and put around bed. --Raid and HotShot brand of foggers. (Meant to repel insects for up to 2mo's after fogging) --Raid and HotShot brand bug/insect spray, sprayed as perimeters througout house. --Garlic supplements. Orally + ground up and put around bed. (This DID however keep mosquitos away, AND I was pregnant. That was super relieving during this shitty time, lol)

As a Killer::(The following I have personally either seen work to EFFECTIVELY kill bed bugs, or have seen the RESULTS within 48hrs) Rubbing Isopropyl Alcohol 91% or HIGHER. This worked 100% when sprayed from one of those travel-section-bought squirt bottles, undiluted, directly onto the eggs, larvae, nymphs and full-grown bed bugs. It not only killed them on contact, but after spraying our futon down, brought the hiding ones out to escape the fumes. We learned then that the fumes slow them down, and will make them leave the folds of cloth. "Bye Bye Bugs for Bed Bugs" brand of insecticide, ordered from freshwaterorganics.com. We purchased two 5oz bottles (approx. $15), and watched the full-length video on YT for specific use directions. This began working within 3 days. Only one bottle was needed for our apartment but I'm a clean-freak, so I vacuumed after a few and reapplyed, and then used the 2nd on my mom's townhouse + garage. (We stopped the use of this brand, as it contains Pyrethins, a common flea-killer, and was giving my mom headaches from the dust remaining in the air) Pure 100% FOOD GRADE Diatomaceous Earth, ordered from Amazon.com. I purchased one, 3lb jug container for approx. $15. I applied in the same places that was recommended for the above insecticide, except with the D.Earth, I applied using a teaspoon, which caused much less dust in the air. This seems to be working so far, since my mom and brother who also have BB's have moved in, in the past few days but there have been no recorded bites so far. I still have OVER 3/4 of this jug left, after treating my apt, her townhouse and the garage and boxes that were packed!!!

As D/E is food-grade (you can eat it, just not inhale it), I sprinked some on my dog's blanket which has killed all fleas and has begun diminishing her ear mites. My mom, bf, and myself all decided to begin taking 1tsp every other day orally in a glass of juice to help with bone and joint health since it has renowned feedback on other blog sites for helping people with these problems (updates to come).

[thebedbugexperiment]

Bedbugs don't make you sick. But some of the poisons used to kill them CAN. A government study released Thursday found that dozens of Americans have fallen ill from the insecticides, and a North Carolina woman died after using 18 cans of chemical fogger to attack the tiny blood suckers.

beatingbedbugs:: Followers, please:: DO NOT attempt to use deet/cintronella insect repellents, raid, hotshot, or any type of spray or fogger that contains chemicals!! ANY chemicals. The only way to kill off bed bugs seems to be mechanically (i.e. squishing them, or with Silicon dioxide/D.Earth)!!

[thebedbugexperiment]

(10/25/13)So I went over to treat their house for bed bugs..

[This is my blog, my story, of how I beat bed bugs w/o an exterminator]

My mom's house, to be exact. Which is where my boyfriend and I got them from. And my mom got them from her upstairs neighbors because she lives in a townhouse of 4 units and shares a garage with them. They were kind enough to NOT MENTION they had bedbugs but began bagging their shit, thinking this is a working method and putting the infected items in the shared garage. It obviously didn't take long to spread, but now, 7 mo's later I am having outstanding results in exterminating this pest problem without an exterminator- while her neighbors have had this problem for over 10 mo's and are still paying a professional to visit on a monthly basis (lol). 

Like I said, I went to my mom's place last night after finishing up my treatment and began on her place. She's moving in with me soon to get away from these people. When I got there, they had already sprayed every fold, nook, and cranny of all mattresses and box springs. Then every crack, crevice, drawer, dresser backing, baseboard, closet shelf, cardboard box, pet bed, EVERYTHING until we were high off our asses (again) and had to leave the house in order to breathe. All was left for me to do was use the powder/dust treatment in her house and garage. I opened up the garage and surprise, surprise the neighbors problem seems to be getting worse! Assfucks. (Sorry, I'm super bitter about this still) They had saran-wrapped a boxspring, but expertly left an uncovered, infected mattress right next to it. They also had between 20-30 trash bags full of cloth-like material wide open lying around on their side of the garage as if someone told them this would be effective. I began treating my mom's side. Not ten minutes into me treating my mom's side, the mother of the upstairs unit trotted right in, planning to place another trash bag full of stuff. She could clearly see I was doing something, and maybe picked up on a few words I was saying, but then what do I know? Her lack of English skills had been proven months before (different story). I opened the automatic door to the garage and saw them loading their huge ass family into their van, and leaving, completely avoiding eye contact. I treated everything. Every cardboard box, piece of furniture, picture frame, clothes for donation (those especially), holiday decorations, etc. Then as I was dusting a perimeter around my mom's things while leaving the neighbors crap untouched, they came back and could VERY clearly see what I was doing. They all paused for a second when unloading their car hesitantly like they hadn't seen someone use this method yet (no wonder), and proceeded to run their recent purchases of more trash bags in see-through grocery bags upstairs. Good luck, assholes! My treatment will continuously kill the bugs their lack of intelligence continuously brings into the garage, infecting my mother's belongings. 

[thebedbugexperiment]

This picture taken after minimal scratching. Before scratching= tiny pinprick sized bites. After scratching= diameter of swelling of bite expands over 1 full inch, resembling hives.

[thebedbugexperiment]

(top) Perimeter around my armiore. (left) Perimeter around my bed’s box spring AFTER washing/drying all linens, and REMOVAL OF BEDSKIRT. Whatever you do don’t be stupid and think your bedskirt isn’t infected. It is. Pack it away for now. (right) Side of armiore and entry to my bedroom.

Used: 100% FOOD GRADE Diatomaceous Earth, spread and ground into carpet using a regular teaspoon.

And hey, it seems to have worked! I will be finishing up the rest of the house right after this post.

[thebedbugexperiment]

Bed bugs. This is funny, it's totally what it's like!

I’m so paranoid right now. I feel like I’m getting bitten all over my legs as I’m in bed and I’m afraid that there are bugs in my bed that want to poison me and kill me. I’m serious. This shit isn’t good. I’m not sure how I’m going to sleep.