To take 2 infectious-poxy children out in public...

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My DTs have the pox. (spots still appearing so definitely still infectious) Last week my DD1 had it and we spent the whole week indoors as a result. (DS went to and from school by himself) This week I am having to do the school run as DD1 is too young to go with just DS for supervision due to the 2 busy roads to cross. I am taking DTs up to the school in their buggy with the rain cover over them - standing away from other people and leaving as soon as kids are in/out. (we live a 2 min walk from the school)

SO - WIBU to carry on after the school run and take the DTs out for a walk and maybe even go into the small local supermarket to pick up some essentials? WIABU to perhaps take the rain cover off if there were no other people around on the street at that time?

I am so fed up of being stuck in the house and DTs are too - 2 weeks is just too long - and I really think we would all benefit from some fresh air. I can't let them go out into the garden just now as it is under a foot of snow and I don't think getting cold and wet playing in the snow would really help them.

I don't think I'm being unreasonable, but a few of the mums at school have made pointed remarks about how I had better hope there are no pregnant mums/people with low immune systems in the playground so just wondering if taking them for a walk will be bad too? AIBU to think that in a buggy with a rain cover over them and not actually coming into direct contact with anyone they aren't going to infect anyone?

(perfectly happy to accept if IABU - genuinely curious)

I can see there's a strong argument to stay in, but wonder why medical advice contradicts this (or was it just my gp).

It was just your go, tho I had a HV tell me I should just go out as normal including to a toddler group with tiny babies and preganat mums! Thankfully I sought a second opinion!

The NHS advice is avoid public places.

Anais, maybe your GP was one of those people that used to hold chicken pox parties?

Against that, the OP's DTs are confined for another week when they have already been confined for 2 - with the risk that they will suffer anxiety, agoraphobia, and desocialisation. I put to one side the further risk that the online shopping driver might run someone over on the way to deliver the shopping, probably (depending on what sort of area the OP lives in) a greater risk to life than the one that you think the OP should avoid. I am sure there are other risks, too.

This is one of the funniest things I've read for a long time.

Haven't read all the replies and will be told no doubt that I am unreasonable but when mine had the pox I took then out to the local park. Chose a time it was likely to be quiet (and it was winter so at times very quiet) and kept kids away from the 1 our 2 other children who appeared. if they wanted to play near the other kids I asked their parents and no one said they had a problem with it.

I do think people get hysterical over chicken pox. Yes it can be very serious (as I have seen first hand) but that is rare. You can take the kids out, just keep a good distance from other people and don't spend time indoors. So to the OP I would say YANBU to do school run with a buggy, YABU to take kids into a shop and YABU to think you can't take them out at all, just stay outside!

Don't forget that you can get Chicken Pox twice. So don't think you are immune just because you've had it once. It was bloody awful the second time!

Jemstone, I am not hysterical about cp, I don't know if I have just been unfortunate, but I have seen some very bad cases of cp, 2 of my friends children were hospitalised (one with lung problems and one who had a heart condition, which made her very vulnerable when she caught cp), sadly one of my friends lost her little boy when he contracted a strepA infection as a complication of chicken pox. Yes chicken pox can be a mild disease, but it can also be devastating, which is why the official advice is to stay at home.

People don't get hysterical.

The problem is too many people don't understand how serious it can be.

You can indeed get chickenpox twice, and you can also get shingles from the chickenpox virus. I have had shingles twice, both times been infected by a child with chickenpox, one of the times had to be hospitilized. Tell me that's fair - me ending up in hospital 'cause some idiot couldn't be bothered to contend with their child in the house for a couple of weeks...? There are plenty of ways you can entertain a child without leaving the house, and like I said before - if it was urgent for example you needed medication, formula for a baby or something along those lines, then no one is going to tell you that YABU if you took proper precautions to ensure no one was within close prozimity of your child. If however you just decide it sounds too much like hard work to keep the child in the house for a couple of weeks then you are an absolute idiot.

And for those saying that doctors told them to go about the business as normal, the NHS website says "If your child has chickenpox, try to keep them away from public areas to avoid contact with people who have not had it, especially people who are at risk of serious problems, such as newborn babies, pregnant women and anyone with a weakened immune system".

I am pregnant and if you brought a child with chickenpox near me I would be extremely pissed off.

I bet all these people saying 'it's fine, go to the shops' would not be impressed if someone behind them in the supermarket was throwing up into a sick bag saying they had norovirus but had to come out because they'd run out of milk.

It can indeed be devastating. But on the other hand 90% of children will catch it anyway at some point, regardless of how careful they are. Any illness can have devastating consequences. In any other time but our own, both my two DC would be long gone from pneumonia by now - complications from the common cold can and and have landed them both in hospital several times.

Hopeful, you can't get shingles from chickenpox.

It is an activation of the virus that has been lying dormant in you since your original infection, not something that you catch from other people.

Sorry you've had such a hard time with it though.

Hopeful02, I thought that you couldn't catch shingles from chickenpox, but could catch chickenpox from someone with shingles

You cannot catch shingles from someone else.
If you?re not immune to VZV, it?s possible to catch chickenpox from someone with shingles. (from nhs.co.uk)

Wrt people talking about colds and norovirus, well when people have norovirus the advice is to stay in for 48 hours after the last bout of diarrhoea/vomiting, in a similar way to the 5-7 day advice with chicken pox for the same reason. And with colds, the difference is that it would be very difficult to advise people not to leave the house every time they have a cold, because we have so many of the bloody things, but that is not the case with chicken pox, like measles and scarlet fever and other infectious diseases of that ilk, the advice is to stay indoors, and because you (usually)only get these diseases the once, that should not be too much of a hardship.

hmm I havent read all of this but it WONT kill you to stay at home for another week whereas there IS the potential to kill or make someone very ill if you go out because you feel like it. Find something fun to do with your children indoors.

My husband caught it a few years ago from a client who didnt want to cancel having work done so didnt mention her son had it until I had to phone in sick for him. He was extremely ill as it attacked his pancreas and we ended up losing weeks of income as he was incapacitated.

It is difficult, hazey. A fuckwit with chickenpox infected MrsDeVere's daughter, who didn't make it :( A fuckwit with a cold landed my DM in intensive care for a fortnight. She was lucky that time, but leukaemia takes no prisoners.

Diseases are wiley buggers. Some of you think that taking a poxy child out for a school run under a covered pushchair is an unacceptable risk. I accept that, but I respectfully disagree. I reserve my ire for the fact that these bastard diseases use every trick in the book to infect the vulnerable, most notably being most infectious before anyone has a clue what is going on. Concerned parents like the OP who need to do the school run and while doing so take every precaution to keep their spotty children away from others are not the focus of my fears. I wish they were.

I know Libelulle, when ds gets a cold he very often ends up in hospital (3 chest infections and pneumonia this year), because of the scarring on his lung, but I know there are going to be children and adults around with colds, I can try and avoid them, but ds goes to nursery and his older dds go to school, and it is a fact of life that he will pick up colds, and will get very ill. But I realise it is unreasonable and ridiculous to expect everybody who has a cold to stay in.

But staying in for the 2-3 weeks that our dcs are affected by the (hopefully) one time they have chicken pox, doesn't seem ridiculous, as I said earlier it is a boring, pain in the arse, but it is utterly doable, and people following the advice must reduce the risk to vulnerable people a bit, or the advice wouldn't be there.

Thanks Hazey.

No-one is saying kids with CP should be out coughing over all and sundry, though clearly there are fuckwits who do that. But school runs are tricky - oftentimes there are few alternatives for people especially those without close social networks nearby. In that situation, pushchair and cover seems eminently fair enough to me.

YABU. I appreciate staying in isn't nice, but I had chicken pox for the first time in my twenties and missed six weeks of work. It can be a horrific, viral illness as an adult, and can do terrible things to pregnant women and people with auto-immune disease.

When I realised I had the chicken pox, my parents drove some distance to pick me up, take me to their house and care for me as I had no food in and knew I couldn't go to the shops while I was contagious. If your kids are bored enough, being wrapped up warm and building a snow man in the garden won't kill them. But I genuinely think you should re-think having them out.

I find this really odd, on the one hand I'm not advocating taking a poxy child to a playgroup or out for dinner, but people send their poxy children (with permission from the mgr and parents) to DS's nursery. I just figured it was part and parcel of childhood. I work for a really family friendly organisation, but DH and I would seriously struggle to take there weeks off between us. I guess if you don't have to go out, you shouldn't. But needs must sometimes.

Easily where would you send them though if they had chicken pox? No nursery or school would take them, I doubt a CM would either unless they had no other children.

I think there are alot of cultural myths about cp, & alot of conflicting advice. Fact remains, it can be very very dangerous for SOME, just cos it isn't/ hasn't been for your dc, doesn't mean the next child will be so lucky.

Read the other thread on this subject. Hear mrsdevere s tragic post earlier (I'm so so sorry btw, I knew your darling dd had died, but didn't know how)

I think it's clear that however inconvenient keeping infectious kids at home is, it's NOTHING compared to what could happen.

This isn't aimed at the op btw, but the debate in general. The stakes are too high to risk destroying someone else's family.

Someone upthread said something about the children being at risk of desocialisation and anxiety if they don't get taken out .

They are being taken out - on the school run. I don't see how entering a supermarket will suddenly confer lots of benefits re socialisation that the school run wouldn't do.