[SwanMom]

Not sure if this belongs here, but I'm just wondering how people handle this. I would like my boys to get CP if they can, but unless it's during the summer (we're both teachers), I don't know if it's doable. How many days are they not allowed at daycare?

Just curious...

 

[EVC]

We're in the same boat (except I'm a student, not a teacher), but at the start of every summer vacation I start looking for a pox party.

If dd were to get pox during the school year, I assume she would have to stay out for a week two. My situation is a bit different, though, as I myself have never had pox (and haven't had titers taken, so I don't know if I am immune) which means I have to plan on possibly getting pox, too, and for an adult my understanding is that it can take significantly longer to recover, with possibility of complications, etc.

So my fingers are crossed for a pox-filled summer. Otherwise, ugh.

You should try posting this in the vax forum, though--some people there have fairly recent pox experience and could tell you how long it took for their lo's to no longer be contagious.

 

[ShwarmaQueen]

Quote:

Originally Posted by EVC My situation is a bit different, though, as I myself have never had pox (and haven't had titers taken, so I don't know if I am immune) which means I have to plan on possibly getting pox, too, and for an adult my understanding is that it can take significantly longer to recover, with possibility of complications, etc.

My DH had it when he was 25 and he was absolutely pathetic. He thought he was dying, even going through all the goodbyes, etc. However, I can remember my little sister having it at 4 and acting pretty normal, but maybe sleeping more.

OP: I think you should ask the DC about the absenses thing. Most of the time they have a 'rule' regarding home time.

 

[lorijds]

PLAN IT FOR SUMMER!!!!

We had the worse case scenario. DH is a teacher, I'm a nurse and at that time was working a job that was very difficult to take off from--there simply wasn't anyone to replace me during the day.

Our oldest dd's best friend got the chickenpox sometime in the middle of July, so we exposed both kids.

DD#1 came down with them first. Right around the beginning of August. School starts here the second week of August, dh had to be back a couple of days before that. DD#1 gets the pox BAD, and to boot, several of her lesions become infected. To the point that they were HUGE. I'm talking, the pox part was the size of a nickle and pus-filled, and the red area around them was several inches in diameter. Awesome. So we went to the doc and got an abx. Then she had a reaction to the abx. So we used a different one, after that reaction cleared up. She did not have completely crusted over lesions for 2 entire weeks. So for 2 weeks she couldn't hang with anyone who hadn't had the pox, and she missed the first full week of school.

Four days after dd#1 went back to school, dd #2 came down with them! Could they get them at the same time? Hell no, apparently. While she did not get any infected pox, she was out of school for two entire weeks.

This meant that for THREE FULL FREAKIN WEEKS DH and I had to juggle our schedules. I was working 3-4 days a week, and I missed at least one day of work a week, he missed at least two (at the very beginning of the school year. Oh, yeah, he teaches German and Spanish--try finding a sub that can teach both languages. Didn't happen). My mom took a couple of days off and came up to stay with them to help out. It truly sucked. I had no sick leave, so we just had to eat the days that I didn't work.

I guess my point is---don't plan on the kids getting it at the same time, and accommodate your schedules to plan for the worst- with each kid getting it successively, and being out of school for two full weeks. That is typically the longest--lots of kids are out for a week or 10 days. As luck would have it, both my kids didn't have all their lesions crust over for two full weeks, which is when they are allowed back into day care/school.

 

[notneb]

I would definitely wait until summer. They will be most contagiious a few days before the first spots appear, so in order to be considerate of the children in their daycare who are under the age of 1 or immunocompromised, you would need to pull your kids from daycare about a week after exposure, the earliest they could be contagious. If they are going to get chickenpox, it will be sometime between day 10 and day 21 after exposure. Then, it takes another week for the chickenpox to run its course.

Best case scenario, you take them out on day 7, they get CP on day 10 and are done by day 17 after exposure - a total of 10 days. Worst case scenario, one DC gets chickenpox from the initial exposure and the second gets chickenpox from the first child - you could have one or both children out of daycare for almost 2 months. There's also the risk that you will take them out for the 2 week possible contagious period (day 7-day 21) only to have it turn out that they do not end up getting the CP. (This scenario just happened to us. I'm PT student and DS doesn't go to daycare, so it wasn't quite as big of an inconvenience, but it was frustrating having to stay home and cancel our normal activities for what turned out to be no reason.)