Hi-
I'll try to be brief:
It started the night I brought home some thrift store clothing and broke my rule about always throwing them in the dryer first - I tried them on. A few hours later I went to bed and about 2 minutes after I laid down to sleep I started getting little "bites". No visible mark, just an itch that went away with a few moments scratching. They were occurring all over my body, one about every 30 seconds or so, just enough to be annoying. After maybe ten minutes it stopped. But then I was woken up around 4 a.m. by more of the same.
The next two nights, nothing. Then the third night, same thing - bitten when I laid down then again in the middle of the night. Thinking it was an invisible pest my apartment gets sometimes in the summer (but never before in winter) I went to sleep on the recliner the next night - again got woken up by itching.
Since then it's the same pattern - a couple nights of nothing, then a night when I get itchy when I first go to bed and/or in the middle of the night. Also, I sometimes get itchy when sitting at my computer desk (separate room from the bedroom) Occasionally at the computer or in bed I'll get a bit of a sharp sting like I feel an actual bite, but of course I find nothing there.
Evidence for bed bed bugs:
* Two times in the past month I found a small blood stain on my sheet (just one each time) and a few times there were little black "crumbs" that could have been molted skins.
* Getting bitten in the middle of the night, which is apparently when they prefer to bite.
Evidence against:
* Do bed bugs bite you right away when you lay down?
* Using a mattress cover, box spring cover, and frequently laundering sheets and blanket haven't seemed to help.
* Had plastic bowls dusted with talcum under my bed for 2 weeks followed by actually Interceptors for a week - haven't caught anything.
* No visible bite marks and the itching is very minor, goes away after a few seconds of scratching (or even just rubbing the spot) - it's never persistent.
For three weeks I've assumed it was bedbugs - mattress and box covers, cleaned the bed frame and computer chair with alcohol and periodically heated with a blow dryer, dusted with DE and made a thicker line of DE along wall edges and doorways to hopefully stop any migration, all my clothes were put through the dryer/bagged/and stored...
So my question is, has anyone else gotten itching without visible sores? Anyone else get bitten right when they lay down to bed? Anyone else had cups/Interceptors but caught nothing even after weeks?
Sadly I'm going through a brief period of unemployment, so literally no money to have a professional come out-- any advice/opinions appreciated