For the past two weeks I have been noticing that my daughter has bites in her back that look like mosquito bites but there aren’t any Mosquitos. I have checked the bed thoroughly to make sure if there are any bed bugs, but there aren’t. The bites are only only her back which is covered completely. I also noticed that sometimes she wakes up with a clear back but then they appear again seven eight of those nasty things and only on her back…can anyone tell me what this could be ?
Give us an approximate geographical location. There are dozens of offending arthropods, which are much harder to detect than biting or stinging insects. They can turn up very unexpectedly. Some people are much more susceptible to mite bits than others.
Why are you sure they’re from “bites”?
Let me also ask: are any of the ‘bites’ located on her back at a location that is (clearly) beyond the reach of her fingers?
Are you positive they are bites? Is it possible she has a skin infection, like Molluscum contagiosum? our son had that, and his was pretty obviously a skin eruption, not bites, but some people have said that it can look like hives, just slightly larger, or even get misdiagnosed as chicken pox. It usually starts under one arm, and spreads to the back and torso, but I knew someone who had it just on his back.
Molluscum is not the only possible type of sin infection that can be confused with bites. You probably should check with a doctor. If it’s bacterial, she probably needs antibiotics. If it’s viral, it has to run a course, but you want to do things to minimize spread, secondary infection, and there may be things that can help, like acne creams.
Alternately, she could be allergic to something. Do you do something different to the sheets when you wash them (as opposed to the clothes)? does she have a feather pillow?
In the meantime, if it itches, try over the counter hydrocortisone cream.
Where do you live that there aren’t any mosquitos this time of year?
As for other possible culprits, people like to tell you that spiders don’t bite very often, but I watched a parson spider run across my forearm, stopping to bite me three times in just a few seconds, so when I ended up with painful red spots all over my back that same summer, I wasn’t surprised to find some living under my bed too; once I cleared them out the bites on my back stopped happening. In my experience Carolina wolf spiders bite too, but not in clusters of bites like parsons do.
When you say you have “checked the bed thoroughly,” how have you done this? Bed bugs hide very effectively during the day when they are dormant. Have you just looked for bugs, or do you know the other signs, like blood stains on the sheet and the little black dots that are their droppings? Have you checked, not only the bed itself, but surrounding furniture and fixtures? Look carefully into cracks and crevices. Get a repellent insecticide spray and spray it into some of the cracks to see if anything moves.
If I were you, I’d have a dermatologist look at the marks to see if they can be identified. If not, some pest control companies will offer a free professional inspection (obviously in hopes that if they find Bed Bugs, you will use them for the service). You may want to call around to see if you can arrange that.
I thought my kids were getting bit by something this past week. They got sick and the “bites” got bigger than a bite normally gets and scabbed over. Their pediatrician diagnosed hand foot and mouth and asked if they had traveled to southern California lately. We called their cousins with whom they had just spent a week in southern California and sure enough they all had it too. Apparently there has been a significant increase of hand foot and mouth in so cal.
If you can’t get into a dermatologist, which I understand tend to have very long waitlists, I’d go for a an Allergist which should, not only be easier to get into, but also tend to specialize in bed begs (at least mine does). And if it’s not bed begs, and Allergist might be able to track down what it actually is.
BTW, did you change ANYTHING lately? Detergent? Soap? Sheets etc?
If she goes swimming in lakes, it could even be scabies. You need to see a doctor. A GP is good to start. If she can’t diagnose it, she can help get you to the head of a waiting list at a dermatologist.
If the bites are in rows, then it’s bedbugs.
Fleas?
Are you in the south or any area where the temperature rarely or never drops below freezing? Are the bites excruciatingly itchy? Are they forming into blisters?
Appearing under areas snugly covered with clothing is typical. They can’t been seen with the naked eye. They are made of pure evil.
I doubt I’m alone in thinking that within 1 second that spider would either have been brushed off, or squished. Why did you let it bite you more than once 
My wife has a high sensitivity to mites. She once brought home an old sofa from a junk store, and reached down into the upholstery and found a folded piece of paper. After pulling it out, within minutes she had a mite infestation up her hand, wrist and lower arm, that didn’t go away for days. She has to wear long pants when out in tall grass, where she has gotten an infestation that lasts for weeks on her legs. No, they are not chiggers, I know chiggers when I see them, from years in Missouri, which is chigger- and tick-heaven… A friend got a serious mite infestation from handling a recently-vacated bird’s nest on her porch.
Holy crap, yeah. If I saw something like the picture elfkin477 posted anywhere near me, I’d be freaking out. If it crawled on me I’d be freaking out worse. :eek:
A nest of them? Nuke the place from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
That’s an interesting tidbit, I didn’t know that!
I was going to suggest an allergy to something, too. I had a breakout that looked a lot like bug bites from scented detergent and couldn’t figure out for the life of me what was making me itch until I rewashed all my sheets and towels in “free and clear” soap.
This can be a fix.
They certainly can be seen with the naked eye, and they’re bright red which helps. I’ve seen them crawling across me several times. I hate the little suckers; I seem to get them whenever I’ve been doing work in our “yard” (more like a tiny forest).
They itch, but not worse than a lot of other things (for me, that is). But they take a pesky long time (at least three weeks) to heal, and they’re harder to ignore than a mosquito bite. I only have to ignore a mosquito bite for an hour, and then it’s as though it never happened. Mite bites aren’t quite as itchy, but they persist, which makes them worse.
Uzmak?
Your views?
Picture makes them look bigger than they are: they’re only about the size of a pencil’s eraser (a website I found said they’re from .33" to .75" and all the ones I’ve seen are towards the small end). And it managed to bite me three times because my hands were full at the time and the little bastards are fast - it probably took less than 5 seconds to get it off of me.