chicken pox and new baby

[earbrow]

We are due to meet my best friends newborn baby in a few days time - in the period between now and then have been invited to a dinner party where their DD has just broken out I'm chicken pox.

Would you risk going to the dinner party in this instance?

[earbrow]

I should add to make clear that the dinner party is at a different friends house

[tellmemore1982]

If I was the parents of the DD with chicken pox I would probably postpone the dinner party, but it does sound as if they've at least told their guests to allow you to make your own choice.

Therefore, as long as I had had chicken pox myself, I would have no hesitation in going. If I hadn't had chicken pox, I obviously wouldn't want to go and catch it but if you've had it once you should be fine.

Chicken pox is airborne and very contagious, but you don't typically carry the virus if you're not infected. Further, chicken pox has an incubation period of 10-21 days and is only infectious to other people a couple of days before, and then during, the period of spots breaking out. Once spots have dried up it's no longer considered infectious. That means even in the very very unlikely event you caught it (assuming you've had it) you wouldn't pass it on for a least a week.

I wouldn't think anything of it and nor would I worry about someone visiting my own baby in these circumstances. Obviously I would hope they'd had a good wash and change of clothes as a matter of course anyway!