Nearly 6mo with chicken pox

[Bumperlicious]

After the hell that was the pox with my 3 year old two weeks ago, as anticipated, dd2 now is starting to show the signs. I'm almost relieved as it explains the growling she's been doing for the past 2 days.

Is there any point calling the gp? Anything I can give her? What's the best way of managing this in a baby?

I used calamine cream (not lotion) on my DD when she had it last year and bathed her in a bath with porridge oats (porridge oats put in tights and squeezed into water). Hope it's not too bad for you

ds had it at 5 1/2 months and coped much better with it than his sister (the drama queen!). Aqueous calamine cream and bicarb in the bath were what we used as he was too young for piriton.

Thanks for the tips. I have the aqueous cream and bicarb from dd1. No anti histamines then? Can she have ibuprofen? Shall I not bother with the gp?

Any other advice? Is it likely to be better or worse for her being a baby? She is ebf.

My DS had chicken pox at 4 months and was really poorly with it. The 2nd child IME gets it a lot worse than the 1st (something to do with prolonged exposure to the virus) and if thats the case then you can take them to the GP if its causing them a lot of distress (ie not sleeping at night) You can't buy antihistamines for a baby, they're not licensed but they can be prescribed in extreme cases. My GP gave them to me to soothe the itch and, in his words, 'to help you both get some sleep' although when I told the pharmacist he said that she looked disgusted!! She can have ibuprofen at 6 months, but ask the GP if she's just under. He can prescribe it too, so its free! Make sure when you book the appt you mention its for chicken pox because they may well want you to wait somewhere other than the waiting room. But if she's not really too bad with it, then calpol, lots of water to drink and get some PoxClin or Virasoothe. Both quite pricey but IME worth it.

Spoke to gp earlier today but he said there wasn't much he can do. She is currently screaming in discomfort and not feeding :(

This happened to us last summer - 3 year old with quite bad case, and then 4 month old with much much worse case. In the end DD had to be admitted to hospital, and me with her (as she was ebf) for 3 nights, simply because her temperature was so high for so long and wouldn't come down even with Calpol and Nurofen combined.

Sorry, not what you want to hear I know, but they do take it seriously if it's really bad in a baby that young. And the good part of going to hospital was that once she got a drip in her arm to rehydrate her and antivirals etc, I knew that she was in so much less pain and misery; and she fed again :). It was horrid seeing her little arm strapped up with IV lines but I was so, so glad she was getting such good care.

Oh, and she had absolutely terrible deep holes on her forehead when the worst scabs fell off; I was sure she was going to have pitted scars for life. But after a few weeks they improved greatly and certainly now you would never, ever think that she'd had anything at all. Magic skin at that age.