Chicken Pox

Yep, little Miss Banana has the chicken pox. At least that is what the doctor suspects. They haven’t fully blistered or anything, so it is still hard to tell, but she sounded pretty certain. The doctor said she wished she had some students at the office today. With the introduction of the chicken pox vaccine, they don’t see nearly as many cases these days. Adrianna is the first case she has seen this year. I had to go in the back door of the doctor’s office so that I didn’t expose her to anyone. The thing that is a total bummer about all this is that Adrianna was only a month and a half shy of getting the chicken pox immunization. They give that shot after they turn a year old. ARGH. Poor baby.

We started noticing a few little red bumps on her belly a couple days ago, but didn’t think anything of it. We actually thought it might just be some minor irritation caused from a game she and her daddy were playing. He would toss her onto the couch and she would slide off (on her belly) so he could toss her back up. She loved that game.

Adrianna is a good little sleeper and usually sleeps through the night with only occasional awakenings and soft whimpers, after which she usually falls right back to sleep with no intervention from us. But last night she awoke and was crying quite hard, so we knew someting was up. I went in to check up on her, and she was inconsolable for a few minutes, even after I picked her up and was cuddling her. She also had a fever. So we gave her some Children’s Tylenol, changed her diaper (to make sure that it wasn’t causing any irritation), and I rocked her for awhile. She settled down and I put her back to bed.

This morning we noticed that she still had a fever and that there were more red bumps on her torso. That was when we decided we had better call the doctor. Adrianna doesn’t seem too ill so far; she still plays with her toys and enjoys watching the dogs play. But she is much quieter and more subdued. She is also a little more cuddly and wants to be near us all the time.

Chicken pox has a 2 week incubation period, so who knows where she caught it. All the other children at her childcare place have had the vaccine already (with the exception of one other infant who, like Adrianna, isn’t old enough to have had it yet either) so I don’t think she got it there. I wonder if she perhaps got it from the church nursery last weekend, but that was only a few days ago and not 2 weeks. Other than that, she hasn’t really been around any other children, so I don’t know where this thing came from.

It will be at least a week before she can go back to childcare, as we will need to wait for the sores to blister and then crust over before she will no longer be contagious. At least Greg and I have both already had the pox. But I will have to miss work or work in the evening so Greg can stay with Adrianna. Oh well. Since I won’t be working, at least I won’t have to get up at 5:00 a.m. for a week and can “sleep in” until 7 or 8 when Adrianna wakes up.