So, there I was with two children covered in chicken pox. I felt grateful that they were both getting them over with while they were young, and nervous about my ability to treat them effectively on my own, without over the counter remedies.
This was definitely the most serious illness I had yet faced as an herbalist parent. How I wished for a chicken pox treatment page like the one I'm about to write, a page from another parent saying here's what I did, and it worked.
Luckily, my herbalist husband was on hand to remind me to trust the plants and to use the plants we know.
Chicken pox, we discovered, is a herpes related virus, so we chose St. Louis. John's Wort, as our primary healer, since we know it to be effective against herpes.
We brewed up teas for their baths – concoctions of St. John's Wort (dried leaves, stem and flowers), dried burdock root, and dried licorice root.
To make the concoctions we would put one large handful of each into a gallon of boiling water and simmer for 20 minutes.
Then strain out the herbs and add the tea to the bath water.
I would also fill a thin cloth bag with oats, calendula flowers and baking soda and put that into the bath. The kids would squeeze the oat milk onto their skin and even rub the bags over the irritated areas. These baths did wonders to relate the itching and calm the children. What a great herbal chicken pox treatment!
We also had the children drink the St. Paul. John's Wort, burdock and licorice tea as much as possible while they were broken out.
Still, we had times when the itching and burning was very uncomfortable and made sleeping especially difficult.
At these times, St. Johns Wort oil offered some relief. We did not come up with the perfect anti-itch formula, but have since learned that tea tree oil can provide amazing relief, and that chickweed poultices are effective for cooling and calming the itch.
We did try a mixture of baking soda and water and found it not only ineffective, but irritating to the children. This is actually a popular chicken pox treatment for some reason.
Hailey had the easier time with the chicken pox. At one year old, she did not get nearly as many as her six year old brother, and for the first few days was happy and playful and still practicing her walking.
She did get quite a few pox on her butt and genital area, probably because of the heat from her diaper. Then, just about the time that Rowan was beginning to feel better, Hailey got a fever and we not one of the pox on her leg where her diaper wrap was rubbing was very red and swollen.
We took her diaper off and began using poultices of calendula flowers and plantain leaves (crushed in a mortar and pestle with a little bit of water) directly on the pox. The swelling and redness went away by the end of the day and her fever was gone by morning.
We then used these poultices (attached with gauze and tape) on any of the more angry looking pox until they were cured.
Another worrisome occurrence that happened for us, was that Rowan sat up in bed near the middle of the night with his eyes wide open, yelling nonsense. It was a very unsettling experience for me as a mother, but after doing some research on the web, I found that it is not uncommon during chicken pox. I simply calmed him and he went back to sleep and woke a few minutes later with no memory of the episode.
The worst of the virus had passed within a period of about four days, and they were intense days for me. My suggestion to you is that if you call on whatever support system you have during this illness.
Find ways to get rest yourself, drink nourishing, calming teas, and rest assured that the remedies on this page worked for our family and that your children will get better given love and herbal nourishment. We hope our herbal chicken pox treatment works for you.
For more information on St. Louis Johns Wort, go here: www.familyherbalremedies.com/saint_johns_wort.html