Self isolating over Xmas - keep away from family living in same house?

[whereiscaroline]

Those of you self isolating over Xmas. Are you planning to shut yourself away from your family entirely over Xmas. Or just keep your distance / open windows etc? What about if you have a husband or partner? Separate beds? This is so shit.

We are on our last day of isolation here after I tested positive on the 14th. I have slept in the spare bedroom, worn a mask outside of my bedroom and kept my distance from family members by sitting at the other end of the (long) living room and not eating with them. I have tried to remember to wipe off everything after I have used it and have washed my hands a lot.

I hoped this might reduce viral load even if preventing the initial infection was not possible. So far no one else has developed symptoms and, thankfully, mine have only been very mild.

Good luck. It’s hard, especially the mask wearing if you choose to (I have a great respect for everyone who does this day in, day out for work) but you’ll get through it

We are on the 2nd stint in the last few weeks with 2 days overlap. We kind of kept to normal. The older DC spend a lot of time holed up in their room anyway, but we ate together and watched a bit of telly. For the younger, joined at the hip for large parts of the day and haven't changed that!

Depends if you tested positive or told to isolate due to contact. If tested positive, I would try and stay away from others as much as possible, where you can.

We didn’t isolate within our house but we have young kids. I got it first, then DD2, then OH. DD1 didn’t appear to catch it. We all carried on indoors as normal .. including usually ending up bed sharing and lots of kisses & cuddles 🧡 If you are low risk, then I think that’s your family’s decision to make. We weren’t worried about catching it & as expected in us relatively young, healthy individuals, it was mild.

DH tested positive last week and our isolation ends tomorrow.

He chose to isolate in our bedroom. He has a separate loo and sink, and the room is lovely and has everything he needs. He's popped outside a few times each day, and has worn a mask when walking to the back door.

I received quite a big backlash on mumsnet for our approach, so I think maybe we are in the minority, and I appreciate that due to house layout or family dynamics this won't work for everyone.

For us it was the right approach for several reasons including me wanting to be healthy as long as possible so at least one of us was able to care for DC, the risk to our health, and as a family having caring and work responsibilities which would become a major issue if our isolation was extended.

DH has coped well, and so far no one else has caught it (we've been able to have home testing to confirm this).

Good luck with whatever you decide to do OP.

We've had so many precautionary periods of SI due to coughs etc and have carried on as normal at home. Not sure how that would change if we had a positive test.

Thanks. None of us are positive but I've had a notification to self isolate via the T&T app.

I don't want to miss out on Xmas any more than is necessary. The notification I've received will mean cancelling our plans and leaving a single relative on their own over Xmas which is awful enough.

I don't want to not see DS open presents either, but DP is worried that I should be shutting myself away completely per the government advice.

@Chaotic45 you did the right thing and I was staggered by the responses you had. Why on earth would people take chances when it could have been avoided? You weren't confining him to the garage. Also if a partner insisted on having the run of the house after testing positive I would certainly have rethought my relationship! A decent person wouldn't want to pass on the infection.

@whereiscaroline it's a hard decision to make but there is a big difference between carrying on as normal and taking sensible precautions.

I'm my dads carer and this has meant he has been struggling whilst we isolate but on the flip side we are all so relieved that we found out that DH was positive via testing and so were able to protect dad and others by isolating.

At the time of testing (via lateral flow initially then a regular test) DH was symptom free, within a few days he was feeling really unwell.

@Northernsoullover thank you for saying that. I was quite taken aback by the way my thread went. We are on our final day and hopefully it has been worth it.

I think a known positive case is different to SI because of possible close contact... and it depends on who has tested positive - if it's an adult or a teen then they can be separated. If it's a mum with a BF baby or a young child - then not so.

Do you know where this possible contact was @whereiscaroline?

I think a lot depends on size if house etc as well
In out house we would struggle to self isolate away from each other too much especially me and dh as no spare room to go to so would mean one sleeping in frontroom which you have to walk through to get to the kitchen

@Chaotic45 I’m sorry to hear you got a backlash for your approach. It seems eminently sensible to me. We are doing the same as you, as DP tested positive at the end of last week. He’s sticking to our bedroom and the upstairs bathroom, whilst I’m mostly downstairs (we have a wet room down there) and sleeping in the spare room. He’s feeling pretty rough (and has cared for covid patients at his hospital) and says there’s no way he wants to pass it on to me.

@Chaotic45
That’s the approach we would have taken too.

It's just not possible to self isolate like that when there's just you and DC, plus we only have one bathroom so just not practical. We both tested positive together so it wasn't an issue in the end but I wouldn't have isolated DD (teens) in her room regardless.

Thanks @LoopyGremlin. @CovidScrewedMyChristmas I hope your DH feels much better soon. It really is a rotten way to spend Christmas, especially after such a tough year. Roll on news year and the rest of 2021!

Of course you can't shut yourself away seperate from your family - at any time but particularly not on Christmas day!! Isolating, as in not leaving your house, is to stop transmission which may end up infecting someone who would then need to be hospitalised and may even die. The average age of a person who dies of Covid is 82.5.

Flu has a more significant impact on children than Covid 19. Would you consider not seeing your children open their Christmas presents if you had been near someone with flu but weren't yourself showing any symptoms? This is the same as that.

We all had it earlier this year, there's no way we could have isolated in the same house, with young children that's not an option, someone has to feed them

This my dilemma at the moment. Tested positive yesterday, and now facing spending Christmas shut in my bedroom while DH and DD get on with things without me (they're both symptom-free at the moment). It's really shit, and I've spent the whole morning in tears - DD always comes into our bed to open her stocking and I can't believe I'm going to miss it this year due to this sodding virus. We'd already had to cancel Christmas with grandparents (Tier 4) and so were doing our best to make the most of things for just the three of us, but this has completely ruined that plan as well.