So I discovered recently we had bed bugs and had them for over a year. I was the only one with a pregnancy rash so I thought it was pregnancy thing. It acutally got much better after giving birth but still there were bites and then my 3 year old started getting more of them rather than just an occasional and I figured it out. Absolutely horrified and still want to blame my husband for having no reaction (for sure I would have figured it out right away if he had a reaction I tell myself). Probaby made things worse by having glue traps under my interceptors as there was a PCO that swears by them and cleans up most of his clients up using this method along with spraying. I recently have taken the glue traps out from the interceptors on our bed in case I have spread them but still have them under the 8 month old and 3 year olds bed as I figure the bug can come to us instead -still interceptors show no activity that I can tell so far. Also hospital and hotel stays during this past year have probably spread them. I stayed up all night one night and watched them come out of our bedroom floor and sprayed them all with Kleen Green. Unfortuately they were unidentifiable after that so husband who was sleeping on the couch at the time is still unconvinced. It should be something you know about your spouse before you get married. Do you or do you not react to bed bug bites?
We got rid of all we could (wrapping everything in plastic before removal), including wooden beds that have now been replaced by minimal solid steel frame bed with new mattresses and boxsprings that all have mattress protectors. PCO treated whole house once and baseboards 2 weeks later. 3 weeks later, we followed with Cirkil CX in whole house (all floors and some furniture couch/dressers) and car and children and I came back to the house a day later. We are living out of plastic but I am still getting bitten - not sure if I'm getting bitten in day or night. We are concerned for the kids health and so bought the Cimex Eradicator since we can't take the children away for so long again and would like to avoid spraying more for the sake of the kids. We won't be able to steam with the children in the house due to the previous spraying. I'm just wondering if there is any hope with the Cimex Eradicator of ending this thing especially given that I don't know were those damn bugs are. I will steam everything i can but if they are in the floors and baseboards do we have hope? Also looking for any advice about how to use CE effectively? How long does it need to cool down before I can use it again? half a hour? an hour?
If we have to spray again....we may try to get our hands on more Cirkil (this is tough in Canada - anybody willing to help me out here? - for my kids - please let me know) since it the most effective and safest thing for the kids from everything i have read. If you have other suggestions please let me know....We have applied DE in spots and a little Cimexa too.
I pray that better solutions might be discovered for all of us going through this hell and those to come. I find it especially tough with kids. God be with you.