How A $1,400 Treatment Left Me More Terrified Than Before

My name is Michelle Carver.

I live in Charlotte, North Carolina, with my two daughters  Lily, now nine, and Ava, now six.

Two years ago, we had bed bugs.

I did everything the exterminator told me to do.

I washed every item of clothing on high heat.

I bagged the girls' stuffed animals in plastic garbage bags.

Lily's stuffed rabbit  the one she'd slept with since she was eighteen months old went into a bag.

Every night for three months she asked me: "Mommy, when is Bunny coming home?"

I told her Bunny was sick. Getting better.

Meanwhile I was Googling the chemicals the technician had sprayed on her mattress.

What I found made my stomach turn.

The active ingredient in the most common bed bug spray is a pyrethroid compound linked to neurological effects in children with repeated exposure.

I called the exterminator back.

"Is this safe for kids?" I asked.

"When used as directed," he said.

That answer told me everything.

I moved us out two weeks later.

New apartment. New mattresses. New bedding. New start.

I spent $3,200 setting up our new home.

On the first night, I sat on the edge of Lily's new bed and watched her sleep.

Bunny was back. She was finally smiling again.

And I made myself a promise, out loud, to that quiet room:

I will never let this happen to them again. And I will never choose between poison and bugs. I will find something that doesn't make me choose.