Urgent we need your thoughts on chickenpox

[OliviaMumsnet]

We've been asked to appear on News 24 about the Chickenpox vaccine today and we just want to hear your thoughts on this.

What was your experience with chickenpox? Have you had extreme experiences with it?
We'd love to know your thoughts as always (and preferably before 2pm!)
Thanks as ever
MNHQ

Thing is, we say that our children are 'over-innoculated' but which of the diseases they're injected against would you want to risk them having?

Diptheria? Whooping cough? Measles? Polio? Certain forms of meningitis? My Dad had polio in 1946 and suffers terribly as an elderly man from the effects it had on his body.

My daughter has been taking part in long-term trials of 'improved' vaccines. I said we'd do this because I feel that immunisation has saved hundreds of thousands (? millions) of families terrible grief.

The vaccines they were testing in our trial were the non-live polio and the somehow-less-powerful-and-likely-to-produce-reactions dipheria. It was a blind test so we didn't know until afterwards that she had tested the latter.

Having said all the above I'm still not sure about chickenpox, but I've only ever experienced it as a mild disease as have my two children, so perhaps that's not a fair basis on which to base any decision.

My dd1 was hospitalised with her dose of chicken pox.

I sent her off to catch it, as some had told me it was better she had it wile she was young.
My word, she caught it.

There is a pic on my profile of her.

It was really really bad and she has been left severely scarred. We considered plastic surgery especially for her face but decided against it - she had been through enough.

The spots were in her mouth, ears and all over her body. The mouth ones were the ones that made her have to go into hospital, she wouldnt drink enough and had to go on a drip.

I don't think I'd vaccinate my two. I think it is a helpful thing for pregnant women or those TTC, if they haven't had the illness. Also a friend had the vaccine as a child because of her eczema. I agree it could lead to a rise in adult cases.

I'm not educated about this though, there needs to be more info for us plebs before they start introducing it.

DD has a horrid time. Ds had it at 4 months but it was a very mild dose.

Unfortunatly he later went on to have shingles at the age of arounf 4-5! Poor little bigger, it was really sore, and the spots got infected, which was nasty.

DS1 caught chicken pox at nursery and once one of them had it they all had it. He was completely covered from head to toe in spots, particularly in his hair and nappy area and three months later still has scars, the worst being on his face. We counted over 300 spots.
DS2 got it at the same time (aged one month) and had five spots.

Neither seemed particularly ill with it however because of the complications I htink that if we can vaccinate we should