How did bed bugs even get into my house??

That was my first question.

I did not have a bed bug experience as a child. I heard about people finding them in hotel rooms, but I hadn't stayed in one.

Then I did my research. The bugs are called hitch-hikers. They sit on your clothing, in a bag, bottom of your shoe and ride to the next spot.

So who can get bed bugs? Anybody!

First Alert

At the time we discovered the bugs, we were hosting a weekly meeting in our home of other Muslim families and their guests. Even though we saw no signs of bugs outside of our master bedroom, we called the meetings off and TOLD the other families what we found. We told because we shared meals together, children played on the floor of my home and husbands often sat on the floor too. We just felt better safe than sorry, right?

Then (drum roll please), one of the women asked me how they even get in your house because they've had them for a while now. BOOM!

Did I mention that before moving the meeting to MY house, the meeting had been at HER house?

Let's pause here. With right knowledge you can overcome any perceived obstacle or problem.  If the sister had been educated on how the bugs travel, she would have realized the importance of containing the problem and limiting guests to unaffected areas of the home. I truly believe she just didn't know any better.

Call For Back Up

I believe that the women of the  MGT & GCC in the Nation of Islam are among the most intelligent and resourceful women in the universe. We have classes for women and girls each week and we cover a variety of topics including housekeeping. So I called one of my sisters who lives in another city and attends her class on a regular basis. I asked if they had any classes on bed bugs. Well I hit the jackpot! Her husband works for the Housing Authority and brought them home from work. She battled them and won. Her case was far worse than mine turned out to be (even had to throw out furniture), but she was my most valuable resource and I credit her willingness to share with our success at eradicating ourselves of the bugs so quickly.

Again, let's pause. Because I was not ASHAMED and ASKED FOR HELP we were spared.

Lessons learned:
When you talk about something painful or embarrassing or troubling, you offer people the chance to offer you help and advice. And also, it allows people to pray for you. My mother and the sister I mentioned both prayed that we could get rid of them before they became a problem. My 72 year old mother searched the internet for instructions and the sister called me almost every day to tell me anything she could remember about getting rid of them.

I'm still looking for bugs even though its been almost a year but like I said in part one, my life and lifestyle have been forever changed.

When I have company, I always inspect where I'm going to invite them to sit to double check for bugs. Then when they leave, I inspect again.

We have always taken our shoes off in the entry way, which is near the stairs leading to our bedrooms. I keep an eye out there.

 
When we return from visiting ANYONE, we stand right near the door and take off clothes and socks and inspect them before sending them straight to the laundry area. But bugs hide.

I don't sit my purse on the floor.

I don't lay my clean clothes on my bed while I'm dressing.

I don't sit on my bed wearing day clothes that were worn out of my house.

Relapse scare: We had been bug free for about 6 months. My husband was doing some work outdoors for the family that I believe we got the bed bugs from. He let our daughter play inside their house. I didn't know this, I thought she had only been outdoors so we didn't do our usual safety inspection. That night, for some reason she go up to use the bathroom and when I went to check on her there was a bed bug crawling across her satin hair cap. UGH!!!!!!!! So we want back to fight mode, inspecting clothing, stripping beds, vacuuming etc. I think we found the only one and we've been 4 months since that episode.


Next: Extremely REAL talk on the anger factor plus how expensive and exhausting it is to fight bed bugs (with our tips)

Also: Click the label "bed bugs" below to see my other posts in this series.

My name is Sister P and I survived...

...I survived a bed bug invasion.

I am FOREVER changed by having had bed bugs. I'm getting itchy just typing about them and looking at the picture below LOL.


Most people are ashamed about having them. I'm not! I didn't breed them, they hitch hiked into my house like they do anyone else who had them.

Your housekeeping skills don't normally make you catch them, but your lack of cleanliness can make them linger and take up residence.The shame associated with them is what, I believe, causes people to spread them unknowingly.I'm going to publish this series about how we discovered them, fought them and have been bug free for 6 months.

The discovery:

I remember it like yesterday. It was in September as the days begin to get cooler in Kentucky. It was sunny, but not too hot.

One day I smooshed a tiny red/pink bug on my husbands back while we were waking up for the day. When I say tiny, I mean it was like a grain of raw sugar small. But when I touched it, it was just bloody. I thought that was strange, I'd never seen a bug that small filled with blood like that. But I went on with my day.

The next day I came home to find my husband had the mattress off the bed and was peeling the lining off the bed frame and inspecting it with a flashlight and tweezers.

He said that something bit him and he caught it, put it in a glass and looked it up online.

And that's how we found out we had bed bugs.

You can Google bed bugs and see pics of them. After reading up on them I realized that we had ignored some warning signs.

Our neglected signs:
I had itchy bites on my legs that I thought were mosquito bites from gardening near the creek behind my home. Bed bugs don't bite once, they bite you in a cluster or a row.

The bites aren't just itchy, they're a bit painful and the spots are tender.

My husband had bites on his forearms, but he was also battling a poison sumac reaction so we missed the bed bug bites.

Then, the baby bug I ignored above.

Luckily, my daughter had no signs of being bitten.

The lessons:

Don't get ''used to" bugs and itchy bites in the summer. Don't just kill a bug and say, "Oh its a bug. Bugs are everywhere." Lucky for me, my husband is this inquisitive "there's an answer for everything'' kind of guy and looked them up.

Because we live in Kentucky with a creek behind our house and have 7 garden plots outdoors, we're exposed to a lot. So we just look at bugs as a part of country living, but not anymore. I'm looking up EVERYTHING now.

I believe that because we caught them early, we were able to conquer them fast. Within two weeks, we didn't see anymore signs and only had two more bug sightings after that (which is another story that I'll get to), and have been symptom free for 6 months.

Next: Alerting people who had been in my home...and where the bugs came from.