my pet rat keeps biting me

Question
2 weeks ago I bought a female rat from a pet shop.I already had one male rat at home who is very sociable and loves to play around me :). I asked the staff at the pet shop for another male but they lied to me and gave me a female who was already 2 weeks pregnant! (obviously I took the male to a nearby vet and had him castrated when I realised the error). every time I touched her or tried to go near her she bit me hard! she had her babies last week but she still bites. How can I stop her from biting me? when she bites she bites hard and draws blood. I've tried using a glove but she bites through it.I am only 16 years old and my parents don't really approve of my rat so I can only really let them out at night. She worked out how to open her cage and unless I put a lock on the on it she opens it and runs around my room. this helped a bit because I was able to clean out her cage and hold the babies but it is very difficult to get her back into her cage.
Your help will be much appreciated :)

Answer
She never had a chance to bond with you since you just bought her two weeks ago and pregnant rats and new mothers are already super tempermental and WILL bite if they dont trust the owner. Actually, even if they DO trust the owner ,they have been known to bite too.  For now, its more like a wait and see issue with her...wait to see how she is once the pups get older.  When they are on their own more she wont be so sensitive because her hormones will be more stable. It is difficult at this time to trust train her since she has the babies to care for yet, but I have  info on my website how to trust train shy or biting rats.  I trained a wild rat that did not trust me and she bit me so much (and HARD, too!!) we named her "Jaws" and once I had her trained and she no longer was scared of me, I stopped calling her jaws and named her "Holly" instead. People would tease me saying I must have switched out the rats because she was so different than she was before. She was a young rat around 11 weeks when I rescued her and lived to be nearly 4 years old.  Please see my website, sandyscrittercity.com and refer to this link:http://www.sandyscrittercity.com/trainingshyorbitingrats.htm

Hope this helps!!

Oh one last thing...although I do not really like using gloves when bonding because they cannot pick up on your scent with gloves on, in this case, its ok to use them since you will want to handle the pups as much as you can to socialize them or they will be just like her...maybe not biters but will be shy of humans.  Anyhow, try rose pruning gloves. These are made to prevent thorns from poking through. You can also check with pet stores for gloves used for handling cats that are aggressive, too.  Rats have super strong bites (10lbs of pressure behind those jaws!!) so they will bite through many fabrics easily.  OUCH!    Although the chance of getting anything from your rats bite is very very low, I do have to remind you to be up to date on your tetanus shot just to be safe.  This is a must for all pet owners to be honest, but if your getting bit often its better to be safe. I had a bite so deep I have irreversible nerve damage in my finger and its numb all the time. THANKS to me being dumb enough to try to break up a rat fight between three angry males (this was a very long time ago....we are talking back in 2003 or earlier) The rats were so mad when I was careless enough to reach in to grab one of them to break it up, they thought it was another rat and just bit, not once, but three times over till I was able to get my hand out.  I cried. Not because it hurt (and it did as you know!!) but because my feelings were hurt thinking they would do that to me.  LOL!  Afterwards, they seemed to know they did bite me and kept acting very loving around me and kept trying to groom my bite wounds as if to say they were sorry!!  The little boogers  :0  I have plenty of stories for sure but I best stop now before it becomes a short novel about biting rats!!!