Pleasse help could this be chicken pox??

[EmilyM]

Hi, just found this site and it looks great.
My little boy who is one next week has had what i thought was a cold. runny nose bit of a tickly cough and a bit clingy. My best friend called on friday to say her daughter has chicken pox (the spots had just started) she has been in contact with my son every week for a couple of days for about a month. Is it poss that these syptoms of chicken pox, he has not stopped crying since this morning and will not sleep and is off his food but very thirty?
any advice will be most grateful quite concerned.

it could be the start of chicken pox, my dd had cold like symptoms for about a day or two before she developed the spots.

Make sure you have plenty of calpol in, and something for itching!

incubation period is normally 10 - 21 days it is possible that he will develop chicken pox but a 'cold' is not really a symptom

I'd just give him calpol / nurofen, lots of liquids and cuddles

if CP does develop then try lukewarm baths run through a sock with a handful of porridge oats in it .. very soothing .. we did this 3 - 4 times a day and didn't use calamine

and piriton

Welcome to MN, EmilyM. Hmm - might be a bit soon to be chicken pox for your son, but could be. It's most contagious apparently the day or 2 before the spots come out, and until they've scabbed over, so you may not know for about 10-14 days if he's caught it from her. Although he may have caught it from someone else and be coming down with it any day now. It definitely can affect their behaviour while they're incubating it, but difficult to really know until the spots actually come out. Might just be a cold. Oh dear - not sure this is much help, sorry!

thank you for all the advise, after a afternoon of cuddles and the trusted calpol he has finally gone to sleep.
Have taken the precaution and bought another bottle of it and some lotion just incase it does turn out to be CP.

Both mine were coldy before they got CP - both also had coughs too.
Seemed to take forever for ds to actually get a genuine spot, even though I knew it was brewing because dd had had it about 10 days plus earlier.

Can I recommend the following products which I think helped?

Lanocaine talc
Calamine aqueous cream
Piriton
Eurax cream
Porridge oats in muslin in bath, then squish out the gunk and use on skin afterwards
A couple of tablespoons of bicarb of soda in bath
Phenergen (but only for over 2s so not much use to you).

Sounds like it could be, if you see any watery blistery looking spots that is the start of it.

Just bear in mind not to give Piriton until all the spots are out, or it can prolong the process (I only found this out after I had been giving this to DS1 and his spots came out for almost a week).

DS1 had it 3 weeks ago and his scabs are more or less gone and DS2 has just come out in spots last week. I must say its not as bad as you might think though and depending on the age of your DS we managed to bribe DS1 not to scratch (DS2 is too young)