To think sometimes you have no choice but to leave the house with a chickenpox child?

[StopTheSundayBlues]

What do you do if you have no friends or family to help out and you have more than one child?

Be confined to the house for over 2 weeks as one gets it after the other?

By no friends and family, I mean literally no one.

What if you need to go to the shop to feed your bloody children?

I know why chickenpox is so horrifically dangerous. But honestly, some people have no real choice but to leave the house, do they?

If you have an older child that needs taking to school you ask the parent of one of their friends.
Unless you live I the middle of nowhere you will have neighbours you can ask for emergency shopping.Yes you may not know them well and may not like to ask but most people would help out.
Or as you have a child chances are you know another parent through playgroup, nursery, school.
Unless you area co plate hermit or only just moved to an area,it must be very rare for someone not to know anyone.

I know you're not inventing it m0ther. I was dubious believing it from the NHS site as according to the website there is a 'worry' about vaccinating against CP.

It's a cost factor for the nhs. Young dc can bounce back, so they can take the risk for the entire population? No thanks.

FFS, people are ridiculously whiny about chicken pox. It's mostly a minor illness and deaths from it are very, very rare (your kids are much more likely to die from being run over).

Also, as with all contagious diseases, kids are infectious before you know they've got it. So it's up to the people with immune system problems to be careful, use all the hand sanitizers, keep their distance from others, etc. Because there's likely to be someone incubating something and (unknowingly) infectious in any public place. At least a kid with a faceful of chickenpox is obviously infectious and you can run away if necessary.
Taking reasonable precautions (eg keeping away from crowded playgrounds, disinfectant use etc), fair enough, but there is absolutely no need to turn your whole family into prisoners for several weeks.

I had to take DD on the tube after a GP visit. She had it really badly and one of the spots formed at the bottom of her eyelid. I was told to go urgently to Moorfields eye hospital. I was a single mum with no cash for a cab and no family to help me. Her dad refused to drive us as he was 'too busy'. It was the middle of the working day, so no friends to ask. It was unavoidable.

When DD had chicken pox at 18 months she broke her arm and had several appointments at the children's hospital (logistics of putting a cast over a poxy arm). We had to wait in isolation and I felt awful taking her somewhere full of very sick kids, but I had no choice.

Is it just me who doesn't understand Yura's post?

@ReanimatedSGB two things: both my cousins have permanent facial scarring from chickenpox. Not life threatening, but ugly. I would like to avoid this for my children.also, chickenpox are very, very unpleasant. I put a coat on my child to,protect them from unpleasant temperatures (the U.K. is hardly ever cold enough for real damage). I protect them from chickenpox.
I wouldn’t want to give a cold,to an immunocompromised person. Chickenpox can be deadly, quickly. Your ignorance can be somebodies death sentence. If you don’t know it, you can’t help it. If you do know, it’s intentionally hurting others. There is a big difference between them.

If you have an older child that needs taking to school you ask the parent of one of their friends.
That’s only if they have friends living near by and not in another estate (even if close by)
That’s if you actually have talked to said parents and feel like you can leave your dc with them.

First school where the dcs were, I would have left my dcs with any of them tbh. Both because I didn’t know them, Dc1 was just in nursery so no time to establish connexion with them. And because most of them just blanked me anyway.

Second school, we were living in the estate next to the school, not the estate where the school was. No one would have done the detour to come and pick dc up (they were walking, I was driving etc...)

@choirmumoftwo chickenpox acts as a reminder for the immune system for people who had chickenpox and protects them from shingles. If less kids with chickenpox are around, these people are more likely to get shingles. The vaccinated kids are fine.
www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/chickenpox-vaccine-questions-answers/

@m0therofdragons

Vaccination isn't given in the U.K. as there's evidence that those who've had the vaccine are more likely to have shingles.

This is incorrect. According to the NHS link you provided, Q2, this is because at present CP is everywhere in children, and it provides a natural boost to adult immunity to shingles. If there was a childhood vaccination programme for CP, CP would mostly disappear and this may increase the risk of shingles to adults.

This isn't the first time I've seen someone misread this bit of the NHS website and form the incorrect conclusion about shingles. It should really be rewritten but maybe it suits the NHS to unintentionally perpetuate this myth 🙄

I was confined to home as two of my three kids got it one after the other. In for four weeks with a baby, a 2 year old and a four year old. Coped fine as didn't want to make anyone ill.

DS9 was 5 when he got CP and spent 2 weeks in hospital!!!!we thought he was going to die on at least 3 occasions in those weeks !!! It's not a joke ..... I don't give a shit about your mental health not going out for a few days!!!
Selfish gits!!!

SGB is right though that the most infectious period is when there are no spots....
So the person with a compromise immune system might well be close/touching a child with CP wo knowing about it.
If we wanted to protect people with immuno suppressed system, we should either all the be staying at home all the time OR see them staying at ahome all the time.

Both are clearly unmanageable and unacceptable.

So you have to take risks and minimise the ones you can’t avoid.
The risk of getting CP from a child wo spots is bigger than getting it from a child with spots. Which means the most important thing is to use prevention techniques to protect from contamination. (That’s your common hand washing for example).

Unfortunately, staying at home with a child with CP won’t really protect people with immuno compromised system.

Okay, still a bit confused as you can only get shingles if you've had chickenpox anyway but happy to believe the NHS advice.

Increase in shingles cases is what I was meaning hence why I posted accurate link. Why would it benefit the nhs to spread a myth 🙄

As the OP said, sometimes you have to leave the house with a poxy child. The chance of you encountering someone who is seriously immunocomprised at random is pretty small. If you know someone to whom any infection would be dangerous, you can ring them up and warn them to stay away from you for a couple of weeks, but that's about it. All the bellowing and stamping and virtue signalling and paranoia makes a negligible amount of difference TBH. Sometimes shit just happens.

I don't give a shit about your mental health not going out for a few days!!!

Hmm nice...
Somone poster said she wouod have killed herself but thats ok because it wouldn’t be your child then??
Didn't realise that one person life was more important than another.

I didnt even know there wa a shingles vaccine until i had shingles last february, [on my bithday] then was told you can only have it at certain ages, and there are a few years in between if i wanted it now i couldnt have it until i was 78, 75 now, if your Dr doesnt tell you how can you be vaccinated against it,
I also dont understand why you can only have it at certain ages,

YANBU. There are definitely some instance in which you have no choice but to go out. When I was younger my brother had CP and mum HAD to take us to school. There were 4 of us, we'd have needed 2 or 3 friends to come 20 miles out of their way to take us to school and drop us home again, every day, for a week. Then for a second week 2 weeks later when my other brother got it. Wasn't going to happen.

My girl has chickenpox now, school called me to go and get her, they were very relaxed about it. "Come when you can she's fine in herself ".
It's just chickenpox, not the bloody plague!

@EtVoilaBrexit if it’s so bad, vaccinate your child. Your child having chickenpox is mostly your choice. It’s not a necessity. If you are not prepared to stay in, vaccinate.

Shingles is not more likely in people who have the vaccine.

There is a theory that older people are protected from shingles by having children around them who have chicken pox.

The reality is, with vaccination rates for MMR as low as they are (particularly in certain demographic groups) we would not have herd immunity from offering an MMRV vaccine that protected against chicken pox.

Because chicken pox is so dangerous for adults and especially unborn babies we can have her immunity by getting everyone catch it as kids rather than vaccinate. That said... I have vaccinated DS and he was the only one in his nursery to not have it! If you want to pay to vaccinate then do it but low vaccination rates are the reason it’s not offerered on the NHS... To protect the kids who’s parents won’t vaccinate.

I was on my own and had three kids who had it one after the other.

Once DC3 had it I took him out in a buggy covered in a blanket

Get food delivered? Got a 5 day wait here to get a delivery! Wouldn't work for something unpredictable like chicken pox.

I'm kidding about the myth. But one reason there is no CP vaccination is because they are prioritising protecting unvaccinated adults from CP and increased cases of shingles over kids catching a mostly mild disease.

And there's the cost and added bidder to the current vaccination of course.

Anyway I don't want to DS to suffer CP and I don't want to miss another week of work so he's been vaccinated. He made it through the CP outbreak at our nursery last, but caught HFM instead 🙄🙄🙄