Tips for Handling Chicken Pox

Chicken pox only lasts a week or two, but for children it can't come soon enough. Whether your child is in pain or unbearably itchy, there are plenty of remedies and steps you can take to soothe them. Most likely, your child is very concerned and worried about these weird and annoying changes that chicken pox causes, so try your best to comfort them as much as possible. Here are some tips for handling chicken pox:

Ease the Itch

There are plenty of ways you can ease the itch of chicken pox. Calamine lotion is the classic remedy that you can buy over-the-counter, which helps to dry out the blisters. Also, bergamot oil is typically used to flavor tea, but it can also provide a soothing, drying effect on the chicken pox. If the itching continues, try an oral antihistamine like Benadryl.

Comfortable Clothing

Make sure your child has some comfortable pajamas to avoid additional irritation and itching. Organic cotton is the best bet to avoid the irritating material, while also providing them with clothing that is free of toxins on their sensitive skin. Long sleeves and pants is also a good idea to discourage scratching.

Stay Cool

Since warmer temperatures will bring more blood to the skin, resulting in extra itching, try to keep your child as cool as possible. You can give your child a cool bath with colloidal oatmeal a couple times a day to cool their entire body, while also providing a relief to the itching. If they don’t want to take a dip in the tub, you can use a cold washcloth on any overly itchy areas.

Stay Home

When your child is infected with this virus, make sure they stay at home so as to not expose others to it. There are actually many adults who have only partial immunity to it, or have never been infected before. Also, those with existing immune deficiency conditions and pregnant women are high-risk individuals to expose this virus to.

No Aspirin

If your child’s chicken pox episode makes them uncomfortable enough to begin using medicine, make sure to avoid aspirin at all costs! It’s been found that aspirin use during or following the onset of chicken pox can be associated to Reye Syndrome, which is a potentially fatal brain disease.

Call a Doctor

While most of the time chicken pox can be successfully treated at home, there can be complications that require a professional. If your child develops a high fever, has an existing immune deficiency, or is too young to handle it, you’ll want to seek medical advice and attention for their safety.

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Written by Stephanie Parker from Sleepingbaby.com, inventor of the Zipadee-Zip

The motto for Sleeping Baby, makers of the Zipadee-Zip, is: "Inspiring Dreams One Night at A time," and that, in a nutshell, is how it all started…with one little dream that has since become the Parker family's reality. When Brett and Stephanie Parker's daughter, Charlotte, was born, the feeling that welled up inside of them was indescribable; they never realized until first looking into those baby blues of hers that they were even capable of that kind of love.

When it was time to transition baby from swaddling, the Parkers tried every sleep sack on the market and every swaddle weaning trick they could find for nearly two weeks and nothing worked to get baby Charlotte to fall and stay asleep.

Stephanie became determined to restore sleep and sanity to their household and set out to find a solution that would soothe Charlotte's startle reflex and provide her the cozy womb-like environment she loved so much but still give her the freedom to roll over and wiggle around in her crib safely. Out of sheer desperation and exhaustion, the Zipadee-Zip was born. The first Zipadee-Zip(R) Stephanie put together on her little sewing machine worked like magic!

To date tens of thousands of Zipadee-Zips have been sold and all from word-of-mouth marketing. It is so rewarding for the Parkers to see other parents and babies getting the sleep they both need and deserve!

For more information, visit sleepingbaby.com.

Interested in writing a guest blog for Sleeping Baby? Send your topic idea to pr@sleepingbaby.com.

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