In the UK,  they don’t give a  vaccine  to prevent chickenpox.   It is just considered a childhood disease which is better to get it over and done with as a child as it is worse to get it as an adult.   My SWCAH daughter got it at age 4, which is quite late considering she went to playgroup and mixed with lots of children who could have been incubating it without us actually knowing.  She was fine, just spotty!  In fact, her younger brother caught it from her shortly after and he was worse off (temperatures before the spots appeared and very grumpy before the spots came out), and he doesn’t have CAH!  I use to wonder if the tablets made her stronger and more able to cope better with certain things.  I’m sure also it depends on the individual.  Some suffer more than others.

It may sound strange, but believe it or not, there are some mothers in the UK who have a ’chickenpox party’!  This is when they know of a child with chickenpox and they purposely go round with their child to try and catch it,  as we in the UK think it’s better to get it young than old, so better now than later!  In fact, I remember one of the mothers at my child’s school who was in my daughter’s class who wanted her girl to get chickenpox (she had mixed with lots of people with it and never caught it!), she brought her round to play, they held hands, etc, but she still didn’t catch it (much to her mother’s exasperation!).