Bedbugs in Pushchairs, Car Seats and Baby Gear: Enfield

Bedbugs are not especially drawn to baby things. They hide wherever there is a seam or a crevice close to where someone sleeps or sits for a while, and a lot of baby gear is exactly that: padded, stitched and parked beside a bed. The question is less whether it will happen and more how to handle it if it does.

Which Items Are Most Likely to Be Involved

Anything that sits in or next to an affected bedroom is worth checking. A cot or Moses basket in the parents' room is the obvious one. After that come the things a baby sleeps in during the day, and the bags that travel.

• Cots, travel cots and Moses baskets, especially the mattress edges and frame joints.
• Pushchairs and prams kept in a bedroom or a hallway, around the hood and seat padding.
• Car seats brought indoors at night, in the strap slots and the cover seams.
• Changing bags and nappy bags that go from house to house.
• Bouncers, play mats and baby nests with padded edges.

What You Can Wash

Fabric that can come off is the easiest part. Most pushchair liners, car seat covers, cot sheets and baby clothes can go in the washing machine on the hottest setting the label allows, followed by a hot tumble dry if the fabric can take it. Check the manufacturer's instructions first, because some covers and harness padding are made to be wiped rather than washed.

1. Bag each item's fabric parts in the room where you take them off.
2. Carry the bag straight to the washing machine and empty it into the drum.
3. Wash hot and dry hot, as far as the labels allow.
4. Put clean items into a fresh sealed bag until the room has been treated.
5. Do not take anything from the affected room to another house in the meantime.

What Gets Treated, and What Does Not

The frames of cots, the base of a travel cot and the hard parts of a pushchair can be checked and dealt with as part of the room. How that is done depends on the item and the treatment. Some items are better left out of a chemical treatment and handled another way, and some cannot go through heat. We will tell you, for each item, whether we treat it, how, and when it can be used again. Please follow what we say on the day.

With heat, the treated room is raised to a temperature bedbugs cannot survive, so anything with plastic parts, foam or electronics needs discussing first. Baby monitors, nightlights, bottle warmers and any medication must come out of the room before the day. The London guide to preparing for heat has the full list, and the heat treatment page for Enfield covers who looks after the children while it happens.

With chemical treatment, the chemical page for Enfield explains the short visits. You will be told how long to keep the room closed and when the baby can go back in.

A Car Seat or Pushchair That Goes Everywhere

If the car seat comes indoors at night, leave it in the car until the house has been treated. Vacuum the seat and the car's footwells carefully, empty the vacuum outside, and wash the cover if the label allows. For a pushchair, fold it on a hard floor and look closely along the seams and hood before it goes to anyone else's house.

Think about who else the gear visits. A grandparent's house where the travel cot gets set up every week should have that cot and bed checked too. The Southgate page looks at children who move between two homes.

Before Throwing Anything Out

It is tempting to bin a cot mattress or a buggy the moment you see a bug. Please talk to us first. Carrying it through the house can drop bugs on the way, and a new item placed in an untreated room simply picks them up again. If something genuinely cannot be treated, we will say so and explain how to bag it before it leaves the house.

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