8 month old with chicken pox

[PercyDog]

Argh. I met up with my NCT group on Friday. All of our babies are 8 months old. Tonight, one of them sent a text saying their little one has got chicken pox and the spots arrived tonight. Is it likely that her LO would have been contagious on Friday afternoon? Does anyone know how serious it is in babies under a year? Panicking! (PFB)

No need to panic. 8 months old is quite a nice age to get CP. The infant wont scratch (at least, not much) and therefore reduces risk of scarring, and they wont remember having them. If your LO does show signs of CP, try to keep them well dosed up with paracetamol, and if you don't have one, invest in a themometer (they are very useful for all childhood illnesses!). Fever is a symptom of chicken pox, and it can have horrible side effects in young children. If you take the LO's temp a few times a day, you can regulate clothing/blankets to keep them as cool as possible if a temperature does appear.

Please remember that Chicken Pox can be fatal with people who have a reduced immune system because they are elderly, pregant or on chemotherapy treatment. For this reason, please don't take LO out in public until the last few spots have totally scabbed over.

Good luck!

Thank you. Phew!

I suspect that the child who currently has spots was probably not infectious when you met up so you may be on a count down to no pox. I agree with the above though - not a bad age to have it. DD#2 was 9 months old when she caught it from her older sister and she sailed through really.

Its unlikely they'd have been contagious. The incubation period is usually 7-21 days fyi.

An 8 month old getting chickenpox isn't unusual. The likelihood is that they'll weather it as well as any other older child, in fact, some say the younger the better (not newborns).

Dd was 14 months and although we had a rough few nights of itchiness (bicarb baths helped) she got over chickenpox muxh quicker than her older brother did.

Don't worry, chickenpox is ordinarily a mild illness even in little ones. I doubt he/she will have caught it tbh. Ds was in very close contact several times with chickenpoxy kids (unintentional - nursery etc) and never got it, when he did I've no idea at all where he caught it from!

they are normally only contagious for 1-2 days before the spots appear and until they scab over so if the spots only arrived on Wednesday then they wouldnt have been contagious on the Friday before. My ds had chicken pox at 5½ months and coped better with it than his big sister did! (she gave it to him)

My dd has CP when she was around 8 months. She had quite a bad bout (as in lots of spots) but handled it pretty well considering. I did have to get some anti-bs as her nappy area was bad and some of them got infected despite my best efforts. If your baby does get it just be aware of that and give them a good wash rather than just wiping at nappy change.