About a month ago we stayed at a campground (in a cabin) for a 5 day group retreat. Shortly after turning the lights off and getting in bed my husband began complaining that something was biting him. We waited until the kids were asleep then turned the lights back on to catch what we assumed was probably a stray mosquito. Except it wasn't a mosquito it was bedbugs, dozens of them, crawling all over everything. Since it was the middle of the night we took ourselves and the kids (and nothing else) and slept in a different room in the same cabin. The next day we informed the campground manager who provided access to a dryer to treat our clothes and moved everyone out of that cabin and into a different one. Everything that couldn't be placed in a dryer I double bagged and left outside on the porch of the new cabin. We repeated the same process when we left the campground to come home. Everything was double bagged or placed in thick ziploc bags. Everything that could be washed went straight from the bag into the washing machine then two cycles in the dryer. Things that couldn't be washed are still in double bags/ziplocs. Also of note- only my husband and oldest son had a reaction to the bedbugs during the short time we were in the infested room.
Fast-forward to today. I've spent the last month extremely paranoid that we brought them back with us. I've obsessively googled about bed bugs, I'm constantly checking for signs of them, and I can't sleep: I keep waking up paranoid in the middle of the night. I've also been sleeping downstairs with the baby (who is still nursing); partly because our upstairs gets very hot but mostly because if I sleep downstairs my husband doesn't complain as much about me leaving the light on all night. The baby sleeps on a pad on the floor and I rotate between the couch and a comforter on the floor.
The past couple weeks I've increasingly noticed a smell centered around where the baby and I sleep downstairs. The closest description I can give is it is similar to a permanent marker mixed with rotting fruit. It smells very similar to the descriptions of bedbug scent I've read on the internet, but then again I have been paranoid about bed bugs. The smell is strongest at night, thought I sometimes smell it during the day. I've tried to track it to a specific point but it's difficult. It is mostly in the areas where the baby and I sleep. So far, there have been no bites/rashes on any of us and no other signs of bed bugs.
The paranoid part of me is convinced that the smell is coming from a bed bug infestation, which so far hasn't made it upstairs to the two people (husband/toddler) who had a reaction to the bites in the past. I do have a ridiculously strong sense of smell: my nose once prevented a house fire. The un-paranoid part of me wonders if I'm hallucinating a smell or if it's something other type of pest/problem. My husband thinks or at least wants to think I'm wrong.
Am I being paranoid? Could this be bed bugs? It's driving me crazy