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Chickenpox
By ella | October 3, 2006
My eldest son started school and my middle son returned to preschool just four weeks ago. For the first two weeks they attended until lunchtime which gave me a couple of hours to sprint into town, buy a few items off a very long shopping list that had been growing over the summer because there was no way I was shopping with three small children in tow unless it was a life or death situation, stop in Starbucks (only to feed the baby in rather more pleasant surroundings than the grotty cubicle in Mothercare) and then drive home praying that there would be no delays to make me look like the worst mother in the world by being late. After exhausting the shopping capabilities of both myself and the town, I then spent the last couple of weeks trying to clear the backlog of cleaning and paperwork that had threatened to take over the house.
As everything settled into a routine I began to look forward to having some time this week to do a bit of work when the baby deigned to nap, to encourage him to eat when he was awake and to see some friends that aren’t exactly what I would call super child friendly (but who might at least coo politely at my incredibly beautiful baby). I looked forward to being able to read a bit, even read a lot, and perhaps even write the odd blog post or two because anything would improve my posting rate these days.
Then my mischievous three year old, William, got chickenpox.
Now he is sitting, itchy and feverish, on the sofa demanding something, anything, to eat that won’t irritate the blisters in his mouth. He has been up hourly through the nights not wanting anything except to see that he is still able to summon me to his bedside. He has been lording it to school in the long-abandoned double stroller, causing me to have a near hernia pushing him and the baby up the steep hill walking home. And I get to go through it all again in two weeks, this time in stereo!
The UK, for reasons I can’t quite fathom, chooses not to offer a chickenpox vaccine and chickenpox is still considered a childhood rite of passage. It spreads like wildfire but we encourage it further by hastily organising pox parties to spread it (we’ve had one today). We (almost) celebrate our children getting ill, knowing that they will have lifelong immunity to the disease, grateful that they will not risk being exposed to it as adults, or worse, when pregnant when the risks are very much greater.
There are few real diseases that our children are not vaccinated against anymore. Side effects of chickenpox can be serious but are rare. With usual middle class angst I’ve been on the lookout for pneumonia and encephalitis along with the bothersome itching but William seems to be surviving it mostly unscathed, except a very large boil-like infected spot invading his leg which will require antibiotics tomorrow. My medicine board will collapse under the weight of another medicine joining the household timetable.
So a few spots disrupting my longed-for free time is pretty insignificant. But, you know, the blogging, the reading. When?
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Categories: Parenting
3 Comments
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Oh, no! How very frustrating for you!
I didn’t realize that the UK didn’t offer the Chicken Pox vaccine. They are SO vigilant about it here that my daughter had to get another shot when she was six because she received the first one ten days before her first bithday and “the guidelines clearly state that the shot must be given AFTER 12 months for it to be effective.” I really wanted those asshats to explain that to my little girl who knew only that she had to get another shot!
I hope that William is better very soon and that Mum gets the time she needs to feel human once more. (hugs!)
Ditto for me not knowing what the UK did, when my first child was small the clinic asked if I wanted the vaccine so without thinking I jumped in. Then after realizing it was fairly new and may not do the trick without further testing or boosters I wondered if I’d made the right choice but by then it was an “in for a penny/in for a pound” thing so I’ve had all my kids vaccinated. So far, so good. Good luck with your son.
Poor you! I had a pretty mild case of chicken pox when I was 9, so I kind of just enjoyed a week off school to read and eat sherbet. However, my 6 year old brother had a horrible case. I wouldn’t wish what he went through on anyone. I’m hoping the chicken pox vaccine works for Tommy, and he really does manage to avoid it. At least in your family you’ll know that everyone will have had it.