Did your child have a chicken pox vaccine

[Gettingtoomuchforme]

We’re booked for one tomorrow, ds is 3 but I don’t know if it’s necessary. I booked it because we have very vulnerable grandparents so wanted to be safe. I also thought it’s now on the vaccine list since Jan so thought we’d better get one if he’s eligible.

I then suddenly had a thought that they didn’t have chicken pox vaccines as routine before but why do they have them now.

Should we still go ahead with it?
I’m not anti vaccines btw he’s up to date, just more querying why they weren’t offered before but now they are.
thank you

Both mine had them, no problems.

Paid privately for my toddler to have it to avoid catching it at nursery.

Yes my dc had it around 5 years ago. They were 5 and never had CP so we got it to avoid the uncertainty. No issues

My eldest had it about 18 year ago when he was 10 (it was routine where we were living abroad).
My youngest 2 won’t be having it (here in the UK). The HPV, either.

Yep and they were fine. Both of them

I paid for it privately for my daughter when she was a toddler. A friend of mine’s son’s eyes were badly affected by chicken pox and he ended up needing eye surgery. I thought if I could prevent something like that happening I would. She had no side effects or anything from the injection.

My eldest did (living abroad at the time - was required to be able to go to nursery). No problems with it. He did get CP very mildly a couple of years later, whereas I got full blown CP and was off work for a fortnight.

Why no HPV? It’s an amazing vaccine.

Australia has achieved a record of zero new cases of cervical cancer in women under 25 due to the vaccine being rolled out from 2007. Zero. They are in track to eradicate it. What a thing to achieve.

Why wouldn’t you want to protect your children and their partners from the possibility of developing a hideous and often fatal cancer?

Mine had it recently at 18 months on the NHS. It's just available now as it takes years for NHS to agree to fund something new, also to get the data to show it's working

It's not your choice if they have HPV or not, they can choose themselves. Why would you want to deny them something that is shown to being massively reducing cancer.

I wish chickenpox vaccine had existed when I was a child. I didn’t get it until I was 20, and was so ill I narrowly avoided being hospitalised.

I think anything you can do to avoid children suffering the risks of complications from childhood illnesses has to be sensible. But then I am of an age where I can say that vaccine-preventable illnesses killed my uncle (aged 3, polio), caused deafness and brain damage in a cousin (measles) and caused blindness in utero for another family member (mother caught rubella during pregnancy), so I know how life could be before vaccines.

Its usually cost that stops a vaccine being provided on the nhs. There were also fears that giving CP vaccine to children would cause shingles cases in adults to rise as they wouldnt have the immunity boost from contact with wild CP. I think this has been shown not to have happened in other countries that have the CP vaccine

I paid for my toddler to have it. I wasn’t too concerned about him getting chicken pox but wanted to reduce the risk of him getting Shingles as an adult.

The routineness of vaccines isn’t based on anything other than simple, population maths. Is it effective enough, with few enough ill effects, preventing large enough ill effects to be worth it to the government to pay for. Chickenpox is typically mild, the effects aren’t typically very serious, and it’s less effective than some vaccines, meaning people still get chickenpox regularly anyway. I got it twice. DD had the vaccine and got chickenpox.

It’s an edge case for whether it’s worth the cost. So some countries don’t bother and some do. Nothing to worry about.

I used to think it was a needless vaccination. My kids have had chickenpox and we’re fine. Many many kids are hardly poorly with it.

then a friends child had it so very badly. Her description of needing sedation to change dressings and the trauma her child went through and almost dying completely changed my mind on it.

Yes, I’ve had my 2 and 4 year olds vaccinated. Chickenpox in most cases is not life threatening but it can still be very unpleasant, and there is an easy way of preventing them going through that.

I saw a little toddler covered in spots the other day when I was dropping my DC off and felt really glad I’d had mine jabbed.

I did for one of mine - no issues. Other countries have been doing it for years as routine.

Mine (age 9) had it age about 2, been exposed a few times since and hasn’t caught it, no issues when had the injections. We paid privately at Superdrug.

It essentially came down to cost, to answer your question. The vast majority of other first world countries include it in the vax schedule. Having paid to get both my kids vaccinated privately, I would be delighted that it’s finally included.

My little one has just had it at 12 months, my older one hadn’t had it and caught it about 9 months ago (which meant the little one had it at 3 months 🤦‍♀️) and it was pretty brutal. Knowing what I know now, I’d probably have paid for it privately but I just shrugged it off as something everyone gets sooner or later. I don’t remember it being so bad when I got it as a kid, but shingles a few years back was awful admittedly.

My son had it on the nhs but I would have paid privately anyway. He's 3 and we've already had several encounters with chickenpox where he could have caught it so knew it was only a matter of time. It's been around a long time but just wasn't offered in England until recently.

Some children get very poorly with chicken pox. I also was planning more children so could have a newborn who'd be at risk as well as relatives in their 90s. I'd rather he didn't get it if I can help it :)

my grandson had one privately as hed just missed the ‘ free’ one !

Similar to a PP, it was a nursery requirement overseas. All children had it and I think DD was 18 months. No problems at all.

No, because I didn’t know about it until after my two had had chicken pox. If I’d known they would have definitely had it - my eldest was 11 and really quite poorly.

Same. Dd was awful with it