Hi moms!,
My and my 2 year old daughters bedroom is seriously infested with fleas. (We sleep in the same room) our room is the only one that is infested. My daughter doesn't get bit very often maybe ones or twice a week. But i on the other hand get 20 in one night. I am absolutely COVERED in bites and scabs. What can I put on myself to prevent the bites while I wait to buy new carpet?????? Preferably all natural!
Thank you !!!!
I would flea bomb that room, removing all your bedding first (wash it while the room is fumigating). We used to deal with fleas as a kid because of our dog (before the days of more effective topical flea meds). The flea bombs always worked. I really don’t think there’s any natural way to get rid of fleas … you need to go all out.
Get rid of the carpet now even if you have to wait for new carpet to be installed. Having plywood floors has to better than having carpet with flees.
We had a bad infestation in the basement a few years ago. I bought Hertz flea spray that comes in a trigger bottle. All the reviews of it said it did not work but it did the job. I also sprinkled some Borax on the floor to help finish the job. One thing you can do is get a box of Borax and sprinkle it all over the carpet and leave it for a week. The borax will prevent the fleas from breathing. And do NOT sleep in the room. As long as you are available, you are feeding the fleas. You may need to sprinkle on your bed as well. Wash all sheets and stuff too.
Sorry, you need the big guns. Maybe it is where we live but the only thing that has honestly worked are the Bombs.
How did the fleas get in your home? A pet? Maybe something living under your house or around it like a raccoon possum, dog?
They need to be treated and then to work on your home will take a few days.
You will have to bomb the whole house. A few hours later, come home and vacuum and clean. 2 days later, you need to do it again.. That will take care of it.
Fleas are constantly laying eggs and it takes 2 days for them to hatch..
Vacuum. Often. And throw out the bag.
If you want something that is more natural, get a little diotomatious earth (the food grade kind) and spread it on the floor. Leave it for a couple of days (sleep elsewhere and keep the kid out). Wear a mask while you spread it and when you vacuum. We used DE after a really bad infestation (which was stupid, because we only have indoor pets) and it worked. I would not use the flea spray anywhere you sleep, and I’d wash all the bedding and vacuum the beds.
If you have pets, go to the vet and get the quality flea and tick spot treatment.
New carpet will not help. You need to bomb the whole house. Fleas do not just stay in one room. Your animals also need to be treated several times.
Dawn dishwashing detergent - Simple Green - and Avon Skin-So-Soft all kill fleas. If you have pets give them a bath with Dawn (the orginal) and them spray them with Skin-So-Soft. Use Skin-So-Soft on yourself and your daughter, it will repel the fleas.
If you decide to bug bomb make sure you turn off ALL pilot lights. Bug bombs are explosive and you could come home to a burned rubble.
are you sure it is fleas? Do you actually see the flea?
Does your daughter sleep in bed with you, or in her own bed/crib?
Have you thought about it being bedbugs?
Okay, this is actually super simple, but it works amazingly well! We don’teven have pets, but we have sand, and we get sand fleas EVERY year! Argh!
This is what we do…
Get a foil pie pan and a night light for each room of the house. Each night, fill the pie pans half full of water with a couple drops of dawn dish soap. Put a night light in each room, with a pie pan directly under each one. (Turn off all other lights)
The fleas will jump at the light and fall into the water. You’ll have to do this for a couple weeks so that you get any that are still eggs at this point.
It’s nice because it works and there’s no chemicals!
Good luck!
Are you certain it is fleas and not scabies? I’m sorry if that seems offensive, but some people don’t always know! I understand you want to be environmental/pet friendly/kid friendly, but you need to bomb the whole house-not just the one room. Replacing carpets won’t fix the problem, only temporarily decrease the numbers. Fleas and other biting critters lay eggs in clothes, bedding, ect.. Fleas harbor some nasty diseases that can make a person deathly sick! Plague and cat scratch fever still exist in modern society! Better to get this under control now before it becomes a health issue.
DIATOMACEOUS EARTH!!! It God given and works!!! It is actually sea plankton and is an ingredient in a lot of our food supply. It is razor sharp to these little critters and it kills them dead. You can pick it up at the feed store. It’s a powder ( you can eat it but don’t really want to get it in your lungs.) You dust it in your carpet and baseboards and within a couple of days the fleas will be dead. If I’m not mistaken, fleas have a reproductive cycle of three days so if you leave it down for a week or more, it will not only kill the fleas, but will kill the new little buggers as they hatch. Vacuum the dead little carcasses up and you’re good to go.
Jennifer, we live in a humid environment and sometimes just bring them in on our shoes. We keep it down most of the time. No one even knows it’s there. It’s been a God-send…
Mimi
PS let someone babysit your little one while you do this and give it an hour or so for the dust to completely settle before she comes home. Once it’s down it’s great. Also, it becomes ineffective if it gets wet.
PSS edit again, lol. Diatomaceous earth kills anything with a skeletal body..roaches, fleas, even bedbugs! Scabies can be killed with melaleuca oil or a soap with a concentration of melaleuca oil in it. Launder the sheets with melaleuca oil. One teaspoon of Dawn can kill a child if ingested. Think I’m through now 
i am the queen of ‘all natural avoid the chemicals.’
except when there’s no other reasonable solution.
fleas are incredibly tough. i have bags of DE for various issues, but most fleas will laugh at it. there’s no way you only have one infested room. sorry, but fleas are not that easily corralled. you have got to blast your house, and you have got to do it soon. you can slather yourself in DEET, i guess, but you can’t put it on your skin and certainly not on your toddler’s.
bite the bullet and call an exterminator. if you don’t, your new carpet will soon be infested. get your house strafed today.
khairete
suz
If it is just in that room it may be bed bugs or something else, most often fleas will end up all over the house even without pets. Are you in an apartment? Can you ask the landlord to get an exterminator?
When I lived in PA my SS’s girl friend had fleas so bad at her house and brought them to us (we had no pets at the time). I used regular flea spray on all the carpets and vacuumed a lot. I also used a mixture of Tea Tree Oil and water (you can also add lavender and peppermint oils to the spray) and sprayed the beds, furniture, etc.. It is safe for humans but will harm cats or other small pets.
It took a few weeks but we did get rid of them. I also had my SS remove everything from his room and wash/spray it since that’s where they were coming from in our home.
If it’s just in one room, it’s most likely not fleas. If it is fleas, I’m willing to bet they’re all over the house and you just don’t know it.
Strip the bed and spray it. Clear pets and people out of the house and set off flea bombs. Treat your yard with insecticide. Give pets a flea bath and when they are dry, apply Advantage, Frontline, or Vextra. Do it all again (except the topical, which is once a month) in two weeks, since that’s about how long it takes flea eggs to hatch out and baby fleas to become fertile adult fleas.
It’s a royal pain in the ass, but if you don’t do the whole shebang, the fleas aren’t being killed, just relocated to another part of your home to continue breeding.
I’ve tried all the natural flea treatments - tea tree oil, camphor, diatomaceous earth. The fleas laugh at them.
It’s not fleas if they are only in one room. Like someone else said, maybe bedbugs, but not fleas. Plus, fleas generally don’t get into the bed. They stay in the carpet.
To prevent the bites - sleep somewhere else. Maybe then you might find, if it is fleas, that the rest of the house has them too.
Also, you can walk thru the house with white socks on, and if it is a bad flea infestation, they will jump on your feet. But it really doesn’t sound like that is your problem.
Natural?
While you & your child are sleeping in a flea infested room?
Nope.
Set, get out & Bug bomb the entire house.
Vacuum everything. Throw out the bag.
Wash all linens in hot water & dry on high heat.
Wait 2 days.
Repeat.
Repeat again.
Good luck!
Fleas will be all over the house. There are no quick & easy ways to rid the house of pests. You need to ID the source of the infestation & address that first (pets may need high quality flea treatment in addition to using a flea comb DAILY), wash & dry all linens & clothes on the hottest tolerated setting, vacuum all rooms DAILY and empty the bag OUTSIDE every time you vaccuum, use diatomaceous earth on the carpets & floors including under the furniture, and do not walk through the house wearing the shoes you just had on outside since the critters hitch rides on shoes & pant legs, too. You will need to repeat this for a few months due to the different stages of infestations regarding eggs, juvenile insects, and adults. The vet said that fleas are becoming immune to the insecticides used on them which is why more people & pets are noticing infestations when they may never have had them before.
Keep in mind it may not be fleas, but possibly bedbugs or scabies, as others have pointed out, so you will most likely need to treat you & your daughter as well. Good luck, as it is frustrating, but please don’t think that you are gross or anything, as these critters are equal-opportunity infestors!
We recently moved from a fairly bug-free high-altitude place to a new state where we were warned: there are lots of bugs. Sure enough, the dog we’ve had for 10 years without so much as a fly on her all of a sudden had little things crawling on her. The vet confirmed it was fleas. And this was after very strict applications of a best-quality flea control. We sprayed lemon juice and water, and got some all natural lemon-grass and rosemary sprays, but it didn’t help. Then we tried Diatomaceous Earth.
EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: there are two grades of this stuff. One is “pool grade” and is used in swimming pools (I don’t have a pool so I don’t really know what it does, but that’s not important). The other is “food grade” or “human consumption” grade. Don’t buy this stuff at a pool or landscape supply place. Buy it from a specialty pet supply store (I just typed in "where to buy diatomaceous earth in ______ [my location]). It is safe, and it causes the fleas to basically disintegrate.
We rubbed it on the skin of our dog. Then we sprinkled it on the floor of the room she sleeps in, and on the bedding. We kept everyone out of there for a day and then vacuumed (with a cut-up flea collar inserted into the vacuum bag or collection bin). I also sprinkled it outside the windows.
Within one day, there were no fleas. We feed her a small (1/2 teaspoon) amount every couple of days and just give her a belly rub using a small amount of the stuff (it’s like powder).
It wasn’t expensive. Just don’t forget: FOOD GRADE, not pool grade.
If it is indeed fleas, I second the Borax. It is in a box in the laundry detergent aisle. I had a bad infestation in an apartment once and sprinkled the Borax all over, “grinded” it in with a broom and let it sit for a few days. Then I vacuumed. The Borax is supposed to smother the fleas. It worked for me.
I would not sleep in that room until it is clear of whatever is biting you!