Okay, so... long story short, my roommates and I went through a horrible, six-month-long bedbug infestation last year, and now that I'm living on my own in a new apartment, I'm terrified that I might have brought some baby bedbugs with me. I've found a few red bumps on my skin that look suspiciously like bites, and I'm not sure what to do next- I'm about ready to panic, but I haven't found any actual bugs yet, and I'm not sure if I'm infested or just hellishly paranoid. Should I call my landlady and try to book an inspection, just in case?
That was the short version, this is the long, detailed version - feel free to skip it, I'm half writing this for my own peace of mind!
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Last year, my roommates and I fought through a six-month long bedbug infestation. We bagged up all of our clothes, got multiple treatments from pest control, zipped up our mattresses in mattress covers, put everything through the dryer, the works. We did our absolute best, but we kept getting re-infested by our gross ex-neighbour, who had lied to the superintendent about getting his place inspected by the exterminators and was promptly evicted. Our last pest control treatment was in December 2015, and we haven't seen any sign of the little bastards since. It was a nightmarish experience that cost us thousands of dollars, and most of our sanity.
Last week, I moved into a new apartment, and just to be safe, in the weeks before the move I'd run all of my clothes through the washer/dryer on high heat, and made sure that all of my furniture had been steamed and wiped down. The only exceptions were one or two coats, which had been bagged up since last June, (my mother helpfully took them out of their bags and hung them up in the closet, I've since re-bagged them), and my mattress covers. I'd bought a new bed before our last treatment in 2015, and I made sure to put new covers on the mattresses before they made it into the apartment. Since the covers had been on them from the very beginning, and the new mattress/box spring had never been infested, I took the covers off for a day or two when I moved out, since I was afraid that they'd be torn during the move. They've since been replaced.
A few days ago, I woke up with two little red bumps on my shoulder. Today, I woke up with one large red spot on my back. I haven't found any bugs, and I'm not sure if I've found fecal matter on the mattress covers yet - there are some dark smudges, but they might just be marks from the bedframe. I've never reacted very harshly to bedbug bites; they've never itched or swelled up for me, and I'm working myself into a panic trying to figure out if I'm just having some kind of weird, stress-induced acne breakout, or if I somehow brought some babies with me. This apartment is in an old heritage building, which means that there are plenty of little nooks and crannies for them to hide in, and the bugs will have a field day if they infest the place. I'm terrified of infesting my new neighbours, not to mention going through this whole nightmare again..
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Any advice that you guys might have would be awesome. Failing that, thanks for letting me vent in a forum where I know people will understand what I've been through!