Poxy Chicken Pox

One of the great things about sending your baby to nursery is that it opens them up to new experiences.

Since being there our son's picked up sharing, crawling, standing, waving and now: chicken pox.

Yep, plenty of disease in fact. You work all week to pay lots of money to have someone look after your child and then the child gets ill because of the nursery, but you can't send them there.. so then you take time off work to pay for the place your child isn't even using.. and anyway you can see how wonderful it is.

I feel a bit like we've been collecting children's Disease Trading Cards, you know like kids swap at school. Having gathered quite a few colds, nasty coughs (there's a lot of these printed, very common) and a couple of gastroenteritis (more specialised..) we've hit the jackpot with Chicken Pox.

And ohmygod.. It's like the Plague! Hideous. And you think, how come there isn't a vaccine?! Well, there is.  In America they do immunise against it! There's a vaccination kids can have that stops them catching it, but over here in the UK we figure it'll damage the Camomile Lotion industry so we haven't bothered.

I went to the pharmacy and picked up camomile cream instead until the nice lady pointed out that this was for cracked nipples. She helpfully illustrated this for me by circling her own nipples with both hands and pulling a pained face just in case I wasn't aware of the two areas a woman might find such things. (Turns out you can use this on chicken pox by the way, so maybe she was just a bit kinky).

Anyway, it's day 4 out of a possible 10 apparently and it's pretty horrific, but does make you feel like a real parent taking care of them. Today we went to the doctors as he has it in his mouth and eye. I've never been seen so quickly! As soon as you say 'chicken pox'  you're treated like a VIP! (Very Infected Person). They march you up different stairs and lock you in a cupboard while you wait to be seen.

We're stocked up on many remedies. In a bid to be mildly useful, I'll write that the most recent advancement seems to be Virasoothe which goes on the pox to cool and ease the irritation. Plus of course calpol and calprofen.. And today I picked up some Children's Piriton Syrup. It does say on the side though 'Caution': apparently they 'shouldn't be allowed to drive or operate machinery'. So there goes our afternoon down the mine.