Goodnight, Sleep Tight....

Warning: This post will make you itchy. And it's long, too. 

Those of you that are parents out there will probably relate to the feeling of awe that something so small and inert as a newborn baby can turn your life so totally upside down.  Well, people, huddle around while I share with you a little story about a how creature so much smaller, and even more inert, can play with your mind, ruin your careful plans, and ultimately, leave you impotent and angry.

It all started about a month ago when I attended a birthday party of a dear friend--one where I met some of you lovely readers.  The party was held at in a playroom at a community center very close to Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside (whoa, it is notorious, there's even a Wikipedia page for it).  On the way home, the Boodge slept hard, and when he got up he was in a vile humour.  He complained that he was too hot and itchy and he struggled out of his shirt.  He reached up to claw at his shoulder and then I saw it: his shoulder was covered in about 25 little bite-like spots. 

What was it? Chicken pox? Spider bites.  Then I remembered that the Downtown Eastside is reputed to be overrun with bedbugs.  Could one of the bugs have been in the community center, brought by some other visitor, and come home on Boodge's shirt?  I put anti-itch cream on Boodge and began consulting Google. 

After perusing some images, I was pretty sure we weren't looking at chicken pox, and that it was some sort of bug.  I took the cover off the carseat and washed it together with Boodge's clothes in hot water, because the internet advised that washing bedbugs in temperatures over 120 Farenheit will kill them (that's about 50 degrees Celsius for those of us who use metric).  There wasn't much more we could do, so I left it at that. 

Over the next few weeks, every 3 days or so, when Boodge got undressed I would discover a huge cluster of bites on some part of hid body.  They were itchy and as big as mosquito bites but otherwise he didn't seem too bothered by them.  Every time I saw them I would go to Google again.  Sometimes I leaned towards thinking they were spider bites.  (Note to parents: Don't Google images of spider bites with your kid right before bedtime.  Or ever.)  Sometimes I feared bedbugs again, but I didn't want to believe it.   Sean, who often sleeps with Boodge, was completely bite free.  Once, I had a cluster of bites of my own. 

Then 4 or 5 days went by with no bites. I thought we were out of the woods.  But on Friday morning, I pulled off Boodge's pants and saw that his thigh and knee were covered in a fresh load.  My research had told me that bedbugs bite in a recognizable pattern of three in a row; they call it "breakfast, lunch, dinner".  And in this cluster there were several bunches of three in a row.  I decided to get a doctor to take a look. 

Our own doctor was unavailable so we took him to a walk-in clinic.  Boodge lifted his pants up for the nice young doctor to take a look and within seconds he declared, "I am very confident that this is bedbugs."  He noted the "breakfast, lunch, dinner" pattern and also shared that while in university, he had bedbugs himself when he returned to residence after a break.  He prescribed a cream for the itching and looked up treatment for bedbugs on his computer.  The only treatment recommended was that of a professional exterminator. 

But here's the really shitty part.  My mom was visiting now so she could be with us on her 65th birthday.  I wanted to make it really special for her, and had planned a weekend with family.  My cousins, the children of her dear departed sister, and their four children, who my mom looks at as surrogate grandchildren, were all planning to visit for the weekend to celebrate with her, and would be sleeping in our house.  This doctor's appointment happened on her 65th birthday.  As soon as I got home from the doctor, I called my cousins.  It was 12: 30, and they were planning to take the 3:00 ferry from Vancouver Island and then drive out to our place. 

The little bug killed that party.  The cousins decided not to come.  Do I blame them? Not one bit. But we were all disappointed, and I was having a hard time containing my stress, not just about the bugs but about my mom's birthday falling flat.  My wonderful mother, who is always giving to other people, who deserved to be celebrated and taken care of, was instead putting on her happy smile and reassuring me that it would all be OK.   Boodge, who cannot stop jumping and squeaking with joy when he knows he is going to see his cousins, was really, really sad.  On the way home from the doctor, when I told him his cousins may not come, he sat quietly, wiped a tear from his eye, and said, "I just want to go home."  It broke my heart, to see him so quietly sad when usually he screams and blasts out his feelings. 

Having bedbugs was one of my worst nightmares.  I was edgy and preoccupied, calling insurance to see if extermination was covered (nope), calling friends who had been to our house and played in Boodge's room.  It took me the better part of the day to rally, but I did, with the help of my Mom's endless sunshine and reassurances that she was very happy on her birthday just to be with us.  We managed to put together a cake (the cousins were planning to bring that) and a celebration at the last minute anyway, and we all felt at liberty to have an extra drink that night.  The birthday was not a total disaster.  Score one for us, zero for bugs. 

Maybe now is a good time to share some of the information I have learned about bedbugs in the last week or so.  Fifty years ago, they weren't heard of much, and this is because of the widespread use of DDT in the past.  Once DDT was banned, they started to come back in North America, and now they are a growing epidemic.  Winnipeg, apparently, is overrun and you'd best check out your hotel room there before you unpack, no matter how much you are paying.  Despite all this, I still am glad DDT is banned.

They are about the size of an apple seed, so though you should be able to see them with your naked eye, you rarely will because they are nocturnal and they are also excellent hiders.  They hide in anything they can fit in--nail holes, electrical outlets, spaces between trim and walls, clock radios.  They eat only every 3-5 days, and in between eating the lazy asses just sit in their cracks, waiting.  They can live for up to a year without eating at all.  At night, when you are in your deepest sleep, they crawl out, get on a nice fleshy part of your body, insert their blood sucker and just suck away for a good long while.  When they are nice and full, they wander back off into their crack and wait until feeding time comes again. Little fuckers.  

They breed by a process called "traumatic insemination"  where the male pierces the female's abdomen and injects his sperm through the wound.  After this happens, the female tries to get as far away from the male as possible and this is one way they migrate.  If you're looking for pregnant females, look in the upper corners of your rooms.  They are also excellent hitchhikers and travel to new homes in suitcases, shoes, or folds of clothing.   They can be killed by high temperature or freezing for over 2 weeks, or rubbing alcohol sprayed on them if you see them, or crawling through something called diatomaceous earth, but other than that there is not much that kills them.  Use of bug sprays and other methods to try to get rid of them may just cause them to scatter to other parts of your house. 

I was still left with so many questions.  Was it just one bug that we brought home, or more? Did we indeed get it from the community center, and if so why was the bug wandering around in broad daylight?  Why didn't it fall off in the hour we spent at the playground after the party? Was it a pregnant female trying to escape? Why was only Boodge getting bitten (this is apparently very common, and also some people don't react to the bites at all)?  And most importantly, how could I kill every last one of them?

I called an exterminator.  I told him what was happening, and he suggested that if I thought it was just one or two bugs, and in just one room, I may be able to get on top of the problem myself.   If I couldn't, I could call him and he would do a free inspection.  If the inspection wasn't clear they could bring in a bed bug sniffing dog (which my mom, step-dad and husband were inordinately excited about), which could determine what rooms the bugs were in.  Extermination would cost $500 a room and would be done by sealing off the room and heating it up. 

So that weekend, we did what he had advised.  Mom and I removed everything from Boodge's room and sealed it in plastic bags.  We laundered all his clothes in hot water.  We vaccumed everywhere again and again and again, pulling back the ribbing of the mattress and vaccuuming it over and over.  Everytime we vaccuumed, we sealed the vaccuum bag in a plastic bag and threw it out.  For those days, Boodge slept with us in our room and nobody got any new bites. 

When we had completed the work we had a very macabre discussion about how uncomfortable it felt to put  Boodge back in the room as "bait".  My mom offered to sleep in the room.  I would have too, but I still nurse Peanut at night and sleep with her, and I wasn't going to bring her in there.  Sean suggested that since Boodge was the only one that we knew reacted for sure, he was the best one for the job.  But Sean would sleep with him as backup, to ease my thoughts of my little boy all alone crawling with bugs. 

One night went by, then two, then three. No bites.  We were pretty sure we had conquered the bugs.  But this morning, Boodge was itching around the waistline of his pants.  "Did you get bitten again?" I asked.

"No, these are just mosquito bites." Boodge protested.  No doubt he didn't want his life and his room turned upside down anymore.  I pulled down his pants and saw another cluster of about 15 bites.  What was worse, my mom said she had three bites on her ankle, knee, and thigh, and had three bites in a row on my own abdomen. Breakfast, lunch, dinner.  Little fuckers.  My heart sank. That meant the bugs were in three bedrooms now. There were certainly more than one.  And our efforts in Boodge's room had scattered them. 

So I called the exterminator again.  Everyone went wild with the prospect of the bug-sniffing dog but he didn't come today.  Just a nice man with a headlamp and a magnifying glass, who inspected the three rooms.  And guess what he told us? "I can find absolutely NO evidence of bedbugs here.  I'm 100% certain that you don't have bedbugs. Now, I could make a mistake, but I think it's something else biting you."  He said you would typically see bed bug poop, blood spots on sheets, and other signs, which he saw none of.  Granted, our deep cleaning of Boodge's room destroyed most of the evidence, but Mom and I saw nothing like he described either. 

So can somebody please tell me what the hell is going on here?

Here are some other confusing things he told us. Apparently the little assholes inject an anesthetic so that you won't feel them biting you.  This is contrary to what the Doctor said, that people often wake up because they are being bitten and it hurts.  The exterminator said that nobody can look at bites and say for sure they are bedbug bites, because they look similar to many other bites and everyone reacts differently.  Even doctors, he said.  And that breakfast, lunch, dinner pattern? It only happens if you move when the bug is biting you, in which case they will pull out their poker and wait until you've settle down, and reinsert it.  But why would you move if you don't feel it?  Oh, he also said that freezing bedbugs doesn't kill them unless they go down to -32 Celcius in the first 6 minutes.  He had actually been to a conference with a leading researcher in bedbugs that weekend, and she had frozen one for a year, only to have it walk away when it thawed out. I guess I can take Boodge's books out of the freezer.

And that's where this story ends, my friends, for now.  One little creature, so much disruption and confusion.  And maybe it's not that creature at all, because now I am back to the beginning, wondering what is biting my little boy.  Wondering what to do next.  I suppose the only thing I can do is wait to see if more evidence, accumulates, and call the exterminator back in if we keep having the problem.  Or chalk it up to spiders.  Or just accept the bugs as part of our natural world, and let them bite my sweet little boy.  'Cause hell, I just signed a petition  to ban the use of neonicotinoid pesticides that are killing the bee population yesterday, so clearly I'm a friend to the bugs, and not the pesticides.  But then again, bees are necessary for our survival.  Whereas, from what I can tell, bedbugs are just lazy ass, sneaky little bloodsuckers.