No pun intended, but bed bugs can truly be a nightmare, and getting rid of bed bugs can be a long, expensive, and painstaking process. You will often wish that you could just move, leave everything behind, and start all over. And, to be fair, that is an option that many people take after a while. Believe me, I've been there, and I know how terrible the experience can be.
Bed bugs have been around for as long as humans, and probably much longer. Although not much is written about bed bugs in ancient texts, one can presume that they were an occasional problem. However, with the industrial revolution and the birth of huge cities, bed bugs found a home that they'd never before known, where they can replicate, travel, and feed with relative ease. In other words, your job is not going to be easy if you think you have a bed bug infestation.
Fortunately, there are better and worse ways to get rid of bed bugs, but it's hard to know which advice to take. We are just another voice in that mix, but we've had a lot of experience helping thousands of people with their bed bug infestations, and we don't think it makes sense to peddle bad information. For instance, there are a thousand websites selling bed bug spray as if it's the end-all solution. The fact of the matter is that it can be a useful and important tool in your fight, but it needs to be paired with other weapons.
In particular, we have found that diatomaceous earth and a good dry steamer are essential to any bed bug war that you fight. Diatomaceous earth is fairly cheap, easy to use, and generally very effective at killing bed bugs if you're thorough with it and make sure it gets every (including every crack) where the pests may hide. On the other hand, a good dry steamer is not cheap, but we think the investment pays off in the long run, since you'll otherwise probably end up trying 15 different options before you find one that works (perhaps even coming back to a dry steamer in the end). A good dry steamer allows you to safely steam pretty much any piece of furniture, including your bed, thereby killing both the bugs and their eggs.
With both of these tools, you will likely need to carry out treatment 3-4 times over a period of a couple months, but we cannot begin to tell you how much happier you will be in 2 months when you can wake up without itching. Just imagine actually being rested everyday and not dreading going to bed that night. Bed bugs are a growing problem, but together we can beat them.
