have you given your child the chicken pox vaccine

[passivehoovering]

Hi all,

DD is 3.5 and is about to start her second year at nursery. She hasn't had chicken pox, and I really don't want her to. I don't want my darling child to get ill, feel bed, get scars, have awful complications, be seperated from her friends...So I was thinking about getting the Chicken pox vacine for her. I have mooted this with friends who also have children but they seem to want their kids to get chicken pox so I am wavering a bit.

If you have vacinated your children could you tell me how you went about it and where you found info? I don't know if I should try her GP in the first instance and ask them for info from Medline and if they know of anywhere that does the vacine. Also how was your child after? Anything else you can tell me would be much appreciated too.

Thanks

I have been thinking about this but am veering towards not getting DD vaccinated. This is because I am not confident that the vaccine offers lifelong immunity. I don't want DD to escape CP as a child but catch it in adulthood when immunity has waned. CP is more serious in adulthood.

Also CP is a live vaccine; my understanding is that DD would still be at risk of shingles after having had the vaccine.

Against this background I do not feel CP is serious enough to warrant vaccination. I am not generally anti-vax.

Private clinics in London offer the vaccine for about £95. I didn't think to ask my GP about it, but you might be able to pay for it at your surgery.

I like your sensible advice bm. But there is a hitch. People don't keep their kids in. That's how I contracted cp.

I'll give you a good example of how people behave. My neice (who works in a hospital) contracted a vomiting bug. She started to feel better and went shopping and visited family. She duly transmitted it to the whole of my family and her friends. And then did exactly the the same thing the second time she picked up a hospital bug!

I agree it would also make sense to check immunity. The two flaws here are that people aren't generally interested in doing this (hassle to book appointment, needle etc). And it costs more money. Also, most people assume they have already caught cp as children - that's what I had always thought.

Although a majority of kids catch cp, I'm far from certain it's anywhere near 100% (I think it's about 75%). That's a whole lot of unimmune people walking around. And then add in the chances of a reoccurence during a lifetime there must be a reasonable number of women at risk of contracting cp whilst pregnant.

I'm now very surprised that the general opinion of cp is that it's a mild childhood disease for everyone apart from the immunocompromised. From this thread and the little I've read since, I'm now keen to get DS vaccinated.

Several sources I have seen have said 90% have caught it by the age of 12, including the NHS. It is also entirely possible to have immunity without apparently having contracted it. I was almost like that with DS2 and only got him checked out because his brother had CP 2 weeks before. The doctor told me that if you had 25 or more spots it should be enough to give immunity and less than that and you risked getting it again. He had 28 - I had to check! I could easily have missed it.

I still think for a majority of children it is a mild illness, bearing in mind the fact that with anything on MN you only get the ends of the spectrum and hear the only worst stories. It is natural because it is scary! The many many people for whom is was no worse that a mild cold (which really would be worth vaccinating against were it possible, given the number of colds people have across their entire lives) don't bother to post on a thread like this especially given the way the title was phrased.

I

I'd report that last post quick sharp if I were you, OP... Looks like a CnP fail!

Err passivehoovering... you have made a mistake I think!!

I get the gist of your post passive

I'm not saying there is anything wrong with the thread title and I hope you got the answers and experience you are looking for. All I am saying is that it doesn't encourage people who have decided against the vaccine to post. That is totally fine except that other people shouldn't be scared into having the vaccine because suddenly it sounds like a more frighten illness to have than they previously thought which is what somebody was suggesting. It really is mild for the majority but any illness is an unwanted illness.

What would really be useful, imo, is if they found a vaccine for the common cold and norovirus because they must account for a lot more misery and time off than CP ever has and you don't get immunity by having had it before.

Sorry. I am trying to do this on my phone and somehow an old text about someone wanting my 3 year old to have a sleepover ( do they know what they are letting themselves in for?!) got into my post. Teach me to multitask.

Even my phone has PMT, how Mumsnet is that? Am going to have to name change now! Have Gp apt for next week and have all medical professionals I know on the case of info. Thanks for all the insites. Yes a cure for the common cold would be fab, but who would fund the research? Not the people making lemsips etc ;)

DD had her first dose alongside her preschool jabs. She felt mildly off colour the following day. After her second dose she was fine, so it was probably one of the others that caused it, not that it was really an issue anyway. She had it as she has a reduced immune system after leukaemia treatment and no immunity to it. I am not overly concerned about her getting it when she is older as she can simply have her immunity rechecked in a few years and another booster if necessary, I am more than happy to pay privately for that for her. If I have another child I will seriously consider it for them too as it can, albeit rarely, be so serious.

To be fair, BFG, you may have contracted it from a child who was contagious before they broke out. It may not have been an irresponsible parent. :)

I do think people should take more responsibility for protecting themselves and having their own immunity tested if they aren't 100% sure that they had CP as children.

From the NHS website:

'Chickenpox is most common in children under 10. In fact, chickenpox is so common in childhood that 90% of adults are immune to the condition because they've had it before."

So you were right BBB, I knew I'd seen that figure as well.

Also this wrt CP during pregnancy.

"Most pregnant women who get chickenpox recover, with no adverse effects on the baby."

I still kept my children in when they had CP (because I would like to reduce the risk of infecting an immunocompromised person or non-immune pregnant woman). I didn't think it was that big a deal to stay in for a few days tbh.

All the more reason to vaccinate IMO bumbley.

That's so reassuring that 'most' babies aren't adversely affected then bm. You kept your kids in for 'a few days' - how do you know when they caught it and when they were no longer infectious?

I was almost certainly infected by the neighbour's child who said he had 'a few spots' and so they didn't consider cp. In fact, they thought I would give it to him and kept HIM away from ME .

I'm not getting into a numbers argument. I've seen figures less than 90%, but maybe they were looking at under 12's and not under 18's? But even taking the 90% value, that's still 10% of adults who could potentially contract cp. I see this as a very high figure. Certainly when you consider the commonly held belief that these childhood diseases are just that: restricted to childhood.

What is EB? I think it's all the more reason to take responsibility and know your own immunity status as an adult and/or if you are pregnant.

All their spots had scabbed over BFG.That's the current advice.

Ah, but how did you KNOW for sure it was safe? Is the current advice based in sound research? Had you checked that before releasing your DCs out into the world?

Plus, as I said before, many people fall unexpectedly pregnant without knowing risks from diseses such as cp beforehand - I had no idea. So, should women of childbearing age check their immunity to a suit of diseases at regular intervals throughout their childbearing years? Be tooled up with the knowledge of all potentially dangerous infectious diseases at their first booking-in appointment?

Yes, it is LeBFG. :) you can look it up yourself though if you don't believe me.

So you think a mass vaccination campaign of all children is appropriate to address the issue of 0.3% of pregnant women who will contract CP during pregnancy, the majority of whom will suffer no complications? Really?

The fact that your children are contagious before you even know they have cp

The main beneficiary of the cp vaccine is the vaccinated child. The benefits to the immunocompormised and non immune pregnant women are a nice plus.

It would also protect the 10,000 children and teenagers currently having chemotherapy for cancer in the UK, not to mention countless adults. Chickenpox can be fatal to people having chemotherapy, whose own immune systems are too battered to benefit from vaccination after treatment starts.

Something else we'll just have to agree to disagree on Elaine. :) I'm glad both my boys had it and have a lifetime of natural immunity without having to rely on boosters that decrease in effectiveness as you get older. It was worth a couple of itchy nights IMO.

Farlo, people dont give a toss
unfortunately

On the contrary, some of us do 'give a toss' enough to keep our children in when they do contract it.

Way to make it about you bumbly
Unite a talent you have there :)

You know it is infectious before you see it.