Chicken Pox

Seventeen days ago we intentionally exposed our son to the chicken pox virus, by arranging a playdate with him and another 2.5-yr-old girl who was in the contagious stage of chicken pox.

One day ago he broke out in spots - yay, success! Boo, uncomfortable, itchy boy.

Why we decided to do this rather than vaccinate him for varicella:

1. The chicken pox vaccine was cultured on aborted fetal tissue, and is not available in any other medium

2. Women who have had the chicken pox pass on placental immunity to each of their infants, and this immunity protects the baby from contracting chicken pox until around 8 months old It remains uncertain if the vaccination will pass on immunities to protect the woman's babies, which would leave them vulnerable in infancy. Dax is a boy, but this would be a huge reason for me if he were a girl.

3. According to the CDC, your child has a higher chance of having a moderate to severe reaction to the vaccine, than he has of dying of chicken pox. http://www.cdc.gov/nip/vaccine/varic...en-vaccine.htm

Quotes:

"As with any vaccine, there is a very small chance that serious problems could occur after getting chickenpox vaccine. However, after distribution of the first 10 million doses of the vaccine, reports of serious adverse events after vaccination for example, seizures, brain infection (encephalitis), pneumonia, loss of balance (ataxia) and severe allergic reactions (anaphylaxis) have been very rare, occurring approximately 1 for every 50,000 doses given."

"A seizure (jerking and staring spell) usually caused by fever may occur in less than 1 in 1000 vaccine recipients. This may not be related to the vaccine."

"before a vaccine was available, there were approximately... 100 deaths from chickenpox in the U.S. every year" (more than half of those deaths were adults)

4. The vaccine does not work for everybody, and those people will be unknowingly unprotected when exposed to the virus (at a potentially much more dangerous age to get it). Statistically, 2% of vaccinated children and 22% of vaccinated teens/adults will later get chicken pox. We wanted to control when he got it and try to make it a young age, as kids who get it when they're young tend to have an easier round of it, and they are less likely to scar. The girl he caught it from was all done with her chicken pox in 4 or 5 days. When this opportunity came up to expose him, we jumped on it. I was especially happy he was able to get chicken pox while he is still nursing, as that will help him get through this. I've also found that breastmilk provides relief on the pox discomfort and itching when applied topically - so yay!

5. As his parents, we've both had the chicken pox already, when we were young. Being around the chicken pox acts as a booster to your own chicken pox immunity, lessening the chances that you will get shingles later in life.

Edited to add: If he (or future kids) did not catch chicken pox by about age 9, the plan was to vaccinate him at that point.

Also - we're willing to share with anyone who would like pox, so if you live local and would like it, just let me know. Visitors have been dropping by to play with Dax. I know it can be difficult to find now that the vaccine is so common.

Christmas 2011

Dax somehow knew you're supposed to wake up early on Christmas. He almost NEVER wakes before 7am (and lately has been sleeping until 8am) but today, he awoke at 5am!
We're talking wide awake, cheerful, let's go eat breakfast now, awake.
So I got up with him and got him breakfast.
At 5:30 he noticed that there was a tricycle under the tree that wasn't there last night.
"I want to ride that!" he said and started jumping up and down with excitement.
I told him to go wake up Daddy so we could open presents under the tree.
He zoomed down the hallway.
"Daddy! Daddy wake up! Put your glasses on! Daddy! Time to open presents under the Christmas tree!"
So adorable.
So the three of us (2 adults being very sleepy) went and sat around our tree. I had Dax grab a present and read the tag. He can identify & spell his own name, so he knew which ones were for him. Although he can't quite spell Mommy & Daddy, he can tell the difference enough to sort those presents without help, too, so that was pretty fun.
One at a time he would open one up, and play with it.
Daddy got a new wallet
Mommy got a coin holder (yay!)

Dax got 3 books, 2 puzzles, 1 game, and 1 tricycle. Our plans of limiting the number of gifts he got weren't completely successful, lol. It's Daddy's fault for buying 3 new books for him while we were visiting my sister, and my fault for buying the unplanned game. The puzzles are awesome. One is a 24-piece jigsaw by Kodak of a panda bear, and the bear pieces are actually fuzzy. It was unopened, brand new for $1. It sticks together great and is actually easier to do than his other 24-piece puzzles. We haven't yet tried the other puzzle, which is a Melissa & Doug 48-piece puzzle that I found like-new for $2.

He adores his tricycle but doesn't know how to ride it. He puts his feet on the pedals but doesn't push. He turns the steering but doesn't quite have the hang of how that works, either. He knows how to work the bell, lol. We've made a dozen trips to the basement today for him to practice riding. Which he'll do for 2 or 5 minutes and then come back upstairs. He'll only ride it if one of us pushes the handle. At least it's a nice tall comfy handle. :) I personally love this tricycle - I had fun inflating the real rubber tires last night. Hoping he'll get the hang of riding it this winter so that come spring/summer he can ride it on bike trails outdoors.

The game was an unplanned purchase. I found it a month ago while at Salvation Army and it was still sealed in the plastic, which always makes things more tempting to me. It's Hullabalu from Cranium. I think I paid $3 or $5 for it? Anyhow, he adores it. I thought he would since it's from Cranium and when I read the box at the store, it seemed like something he could play. There are a bunch of little pads you toss around on the floor to create the game mat. Each pad is a different shape, different color, and has a picture on it. There's a music box that yells out instructions - like stand on a red mat, or on a circle, etc. The instructions vary a lot, too - sometimes it tells you to put your elbow on a triangle. Dax was cracking up when we had to put our noses on blue. He thinks the game is hilarious and he's played it a ton today. I think it will be fun for him to play when he has friends over, and I bet he'll have a blast playing it with his cousins when we see them again. It's a high-energy game and the music makes him dance around. So this unplanned purchase was his hands-down favorite.

He did like each of his books and we read each one as they were opened, and he's put together the panda puzzle twice today.
By noon, he was worn out and tired and is napping. I think I may join him. It's a quiet weekend for our family, as we're sequestering Dax due to chicken pox. ;)