Chicken Pox, that is. Actually Lily and I agree that it would be better off called Tapioca Pox because the blisters look more like a pearl of tapioca than they do chickpeas.
Lily is covered in the pox, even a few in her mouth and Leif has only exhibited one mark that looked like the pox so far. Either this is as bad as it will be for him or his is still coming.
Both kids are acting normally and not seeming ill but Lily complains of being itchy from time to time. As long as she keeps her mind off of it she’s good so we’ve been watching movies and doing crafts.
If anything, Lily’s sour about being introduced to the pox on purpose and without her knowing. We’d taken both kids to a Chicken Pox Brunch a little more than two weeks ago. It was last minute and we didn’t take the time to explain the reason behind our going.
She’s almost nine now and while I still would have wanted to expose her to the chicken pox, I wish I’d explained beforehand so she didn’t feel ambushed after the fact.
I didn’t realize it takes almost two weeks for the pox to incubate! Did you give them anything to boost the immune system before or now, during?
It’ll be so nice to be done with it. I think Mira got it last year. She was playing with a friend who came to school with chicken pox and then had three pox looking spots and a wee fever, but that was the extent of it so I was never sure if it was actually chicken pox or not.
I think it can take up to 21 days to incubate! I was almost wondering if we wouldn’t get it!
We’re big on consuming nutrient rich foods already but were sure to consume good whole foods and super foods while we were waiting for them to show themselves. (I’ll blog more about this later too!) Smoothies with spirulina, cacao powder, frozen and fresh fruit, chia seeds, hemp hearts, coconut milk and coconut water…. soaked goji berries in teas of marshmallow, nettle, burdock root, yarrow, liquorice root, alfalfa…. (in appropriate measurements), chlorophyl in water, kid’s kindervital floradix, lots and lots of leafy greens of all kinds… Yum!
Mira is lucky if that’s all she got and it’s very likely it was. Everyone reacts differently. Poor Lily isn’t so lucky and is covered. The worst place is on her back and the most annoying places are in her mouth, on and under her eye, and behind her ears. I’ll be glad to have got through this though. The last time we had the opportunity to get it, Leif was under a year and I decided to wait.
AHHHHHHH! we’ve tried three times to get the pox!! including a time when eliza was 2 and we kept switching sippy cups with her friend (a little bewildering at the time!). ani is adamant that no way does she want them, but we have friends who had them as adults – i’ve seen the pictures – and they got really sick. eliza is almost ten, and i keep hoping, but we don’t hear of many cases around here…tell lily the alternatives are not fun, and she’s on her way to being done!! (does oatmeal help the itchiness? or baking soda?) hang in there!
Yay for a successful chicken pox party!
My oldest is almost 16 and she’s never gotten the chicken pox. At one time, she was literally only one of two children in her daycare, everyone else had chicken pox. We’ve tried a few more times over the years but no luck.
And now with everyone vaccinated against chicken pox, I wonder if my younger two will ever be exposed as children (we don’t vaccinate).
Oh, and reading through your comments… I can’t wait to read your upcoming blog post about boosting their immune systems!
so good to read this. i hear you on the wishing you could go back and prep her for it. it’s a tough call… i am over here patiently stalking the wild chicken pox, hard to come by around these parts!
I wish I could invite you all over for a pox party! xx
poor lil, but yes she is getting through the worst hour by hour. maybe she could draw or somehow express the discomfort artistically as she moves through different phases?
i hear her about the sour feelings. i would feel sour too, and yet it is a hard decision, knowing as we do that there are fewer (but still certainly plenty) of people who no longer contract it, and it is therefore harder to be exposed to it. i don’t know many who have vaxxed for it, but some for sure. i think it will always exist for awhile…
i am not sure how i would handle preparing them for a “party” i think that i have such a feeling of wanting my kids to know the whole truth, that i would tell them and then they might say they were not wanting to go and so we wouldn’t ;-) i’m sheepishly hoping that we just stumble on it the good old fashioned way. i do feel a bit uncomfortable putting one over on them, only because it is so unpleasant, and isn’t always worse the older you get (though it can be) and sometimes you can get to adulthood with the antibodies…my husband did. no none in his family remembers him getting it, yet he was tested by our doc and he has the antibodies…
that said, it’s great that you went with what seemed like a reasonable situation to expose them to (it’s hardly life threatening afterall), and that it took! that is impressive, and now they won’t have to go through it again. i think child hood diseases are part of childhood, and there’s no way i’m filling my kids with untested chemical cocktails just to spare me the inconvenience of a few days off work to nurse them through it.
rant over ;-)
~erin xo