Newborn has chicken pox!!

[Spencer2]

Hi everyone

My 4 week old has unfortunately caught chicken pox from 2 yo ds. Ds was fine and despite having a fair few spots he recovered quickly and was fine within himself throughout.

Should I be worried that newborn has it? Shall I just monitor and keep close eye or should I really be getting him seen by gp?

Is there an update OP? How did your newborn cope with it in the end? DD1 (5yo) has just came out with chicken pox and DD2 is only 6 weeks old 😬 so I’m just waiting for DD2 to start coming out in spots.

@WhoSaidWhat123 sorry for the late response - only just seen your message! Luckily he caught it mildly and wasn’t bothered by it. Are you breastfeeding? My understanding is that if you are bf’ing and have had it yourself in the past that you may have passed enough antibodies to baby so that they are semi immune and will hopefully catch it mildly. Hope your little one is ok and making a speedy recovery xx

Mu dd caught it and wasn't immune from me unfortunately I was ebf.
She is 11 and still has some good scars

Thanks for your responses ☺️ so far littlest one hasn’t caught it, she’ll be 7 weeks on Monday. If she can hold on until 8 weeks at least she can have calpol then! Eldest DD has had it quite tough, temperature of 40.1 at times! Hopefully won’t be the same for littlest one!

One of the previous posts said the GP said to alternate calpol and nurofen. Don't do this for chickenpox! Don't use ibruprofen for chickenpox - can cause its own problems.

@Legoroses I almost did that! Before eldest came out in spots she woke up crying in the night and had the very high temp of 40.1 (but was otherwise fine), so I gave her calpol, stripped her down and gave her a drink. An hour later she was still high so I told DH if she was still high in an hour I’ll give her Neurofen because I found with previous high temp’s Ibuprofen worked best, but luckily I checked for a rash and then found 3 spots on her torso and knew a couple of other children in her class had it so luckily knew not to give her Ibuprofen!

My son got it at exactly the same age, we were actually in hospital when he came out in spots as he had a bad case of bronchiolitis!

The doctors were remarkably unconcerned and apart from moving us from a shared ward to a single room due to the contagious nature of chicken pox, they barely even commented on it. I asked and they said he would still have some protection from me, and they don't treat chickenpox unless they were to get severely infected or something like that.

We were discharged the day after the spots appeared and he was fine, they didn't seem to bother him and crusted over within a few days.

So I'd say don't panic, just keep an eye on how baby is generally and if any signs of more illness then certainly see a GP. I was told a very young baby is likely to have a mild case, which DS did. Only 6 spots in total.

Our childminder’s son caught it as a newborn and developed what I think is called congenital chickenpox - basically his body didn’t recognise it as a disease and didn’t fight it, so he caught it again and again, and was hospitalised several times. It resolved at end of primary type age but was awful before that.

DS got chicken pox when DD was 4 weeks. Many people said as I was EBF and had had chicken pox that DD wouldn’t get it.

When she was 6 weeks she got it and was very spotty! But was fine with it - she was a bit more sleepy and that was about it.

Now 17 and hasn’t had it again

Glad to hear your little ones were ok with it. Definitely has put me at ease 😊