Bed Bugs Love Birthday Party Sleepovers

You daughter is exhausted after a super fun birthday party sleepover with four other kids from her class. What a night. Popcorn, pizza and cake. The girls settle into their sleeping bags to watch a movie and then there is plenty of girl talk before they finally fall asleep.

A couple of weeks or even months pass, and you notice that your daughter has a few little bites on her legs. It’s winter now and there are no mosquitos in sight. What can be biting her? You start to think back to that birthday party and suspect that one of the birthday party guests might have brought an unwanted present – Bed Bugs!

You start ripping apart your daughter’s bed looking for evidence. You might not find anything at all because bed bugs love to hide in the nooks and crannies. If you get lucky, you might find a bug but more likely, you will find a red smear of blood or a few black spots to indicate that there are bed bugs.

This is exactly the scenario for one of my customers today. Thankfully, they caught the problem early, but they are thinking twice now about ever having a sleepover again or even allowing their daughter to go to a sleepover in the future.

My advice is that, if you send your child on a sleepover, immediately put all their clothes, stuffed animals, sleeping bag and back pack in the dryer for half an hour upon their return home. Bed bugs die at 45C and your dryer is the first line of defence against bed bugs.