Adventures with Chicken Pox

Chickenpox... What used to be a common childhood illness that pretty much everyone in my generation and older had when they were younger, almost a right of passage, is now becoming less common.  When we heard through the grapevine that someone we knew had chicken pox, I immediately knew I wanted to take Grant over for a play date to expose him.  Some people might think we are crazy but the way I looked at it was I was already off of work for maternity leave and better now than later.

Before exposure my research began with what were the risks for Amelia.  What I found was that infants are still normally protected by mother's antibodies from birth and the fact that I am nursing increased her protection even more.  The downfall I found was that if she did indeed end up with it somehow the likelihood of her building immunity to it was low and she would likely get it again.  To me the benefits of me being off of work right now and being able to stay home with Grant for at least a week outweighed the extremely UNLIKELY risks so we decided to go ahead. 

We were hypervigilant leading up the the 10-16 day post exposure mark because the last thing we wanted to do was expose anyone who didn't want to be exposed.  Grant never once exhibited the normal cold and fever type symptoms that come on before the spots appear.  It wasn't until day 14 after exposure that I noticed one spot on Grant's scalp.  We weren't sure whether it was a mosquito bite or the beginnings.  Grant went to sleep that night and woke up with more spots on his torso and we knew this was it!

Many of the red spots seen here never developed into the pustule phase.  They were simply red spots that showed up and never even scabbed over and went away.

Gradually new spots appeared over the next three days, old spots developed pustules and then scabbed over.  Day and night 3 were the worse days.  The number of spots peaked, Grant's mood deteriorated, and he ran a slight fever of 100.5 in the afternoon.  That night he slept very restlessly and cried for me several times throughout the night until I finally got up with him and we slept on the couch.

He had the highest concentration of spots on his scalp and butt/groin area (didn't take a picture of those! lol).

Day 2

We soaked a couple times a day in an oatmeal and melaleuca bath oil bath.  I put thieves essential oil on his feet at night.

Day 3

We played a "paint the dots" game with calamine lotion and by day 5 all spots were completely scabbed over and dried up.

Day 2

Grant never complained of being itchy but we also never asked him either (we didn't want it to be one of those mental things that maybe you don't realize something itches/hurts until someone mentions it).  He only scratched the spots on his scalp and groin area and returned to daycare 7 days after the chicken pox erupted and all spots were scabbed over/healed.

We are now three weeks since Grant developed chicken pox and Amelia and other children he was exposed to remain unscathed.  Some friends that wanted to share developed a very very mild case of chicken pox (exposed on day 2) while another exposed on day 3 never got them. 

Overall, we would do it again in a heartbeat and plan to when Amelia is older.