Chicken pox vaccine for one DC but not the other?

[chickenpoxvacchelp]

DS is 4 and about to start school in September. He hasn't had chicken pox yet so I'm thinking of getting him vaccinated privately, as he's the sort of child that gets very poorly when he catches things.
The issue is £150 is a lot of money for us, and while we can just about scrape it together we definitely can't find another £150 to have DD (1) vaccinated too. As it's a live vaccine, am I risking him passing it to DD if I have him vaccinated and not her? Has anyone had any experience of only vaccinating one child at a time?

Bump 🙂

Our youngst child had it at 6 yo. The doctor said she couldn't be with her infant newborn cousin afterward. I don't remember how long time it was.
We had visited the baby and at that time we were living in two different countries so it wasn't an issue.

Our oldest children had chickenpox before turning 2-3 yo so that wasn't an issue.

Talk to the doctor.

Are there any underlying reasons as to why you don't want him to get it? It will likely go around in reception/Y1 and if he's otherwise healthy I think it's worth hanging on a little longer before going for the vaccine for natural immunity, if money is an issue. He's still young enough that it shouldn't be too unpleasant.

It's because he gets so poorly with illnesses that other children seem to breeze through. He had HFM 3 times and was really ill each time. He got a stomach bug and had to go to A&E twice with dehydration because couldn't stop throwing up for 2 weeks. He was hospitalised with croup because the steroids didn't work.
I just have this fear, maybe irrational, that if he gets it he's going to be very poorly with it. But now I'm thinking what if he gets vaccinated then passes it on to DD and she gets poorly?

I think there must be a risk of passing it on because when my DD had hers, we were advised to avoid pregnant women and newborns.

I would highly recommend the vaccine though. Most children are fine but some can become extremely poorly, and most are left with scars to some degree.

Could you save up for a couple of months to have them both done at the same time? Some protection is offered from the first injection. £150 is for two doses normally, maybe you could have them both done now (£75 each) and save up for the booster in 6-8 weeks?

Older children often get very ill of chickenpox. That's why our youngst had the vaccination. I would have prefered her to have caught it young as her older siblings.

Vaccination covers is 85% but if they catch chickenpox they tend to become less ill.

We had DD1 (and DH, who had never had it!) vaccinated when DD2 was too young to have the vaccine, but not a newborn. DD2 was completely fine (as were the other two, neither had any side effects from it). We did then vaccinate DD2 when she was old enough.

It's a standard vaccine in many countries, and I think it's been recommended to be added to the schedule here – I'd definitely do it with a 4 year old who seems to get the worst of every illness. I'd try to save up to get your second done as well, though, or do first dose for each if you can save up for second doses for both in a couple of months.

Thank you very much everyone, I have to admit that in my anxiety fog I didn't even think about splitting the £150 across two first doses! DD is just turned 1 so I'll get her MMR out of the way and then get them both in for their first dose.

we are in a similar situation where our first son (2year 10 months) didn't get the vaccine for chickenpox as when he was 1 we could just not find it, it was still around the covid vaccinations. Then we moved house and we renovated and we were very caught with it and just forgot. Our youngest son is now 9 week old and he just had his first round of vaccines. We asked the GP and they said they don't know (the GP was completely useless on everything and kept checking guidelines) so we asked the nurse who is doing vaccinations and also the nurse at the hospital where he had his BCG vaccine. They both said this: the vaccine is a live vaccine but will not give chickenpox to the vaccinated person. The only contagious part is when the vaccine is eliminated from the body. So say the toddler is vaccinated, then he does a poo/pee and somehow he touches the pee, he is not washed properly, or the mother touches it when changing the nappy and it is passed that way. But chances are supposed to be very very slim. I did some research and there are only 11 cases recorded of people getting the chickenpox from the vaccine itself. They recommended our toddler to have the vaccine but if we want to be 100% sure we can wait until our youngest will be 3 months, I guess that is when their immune system gets a boost after having two rounds of vaccines

"...most are left with scars to some degree."

Most? This really isn't true.