i insist you do your own research and talk to trusted medical professionals. natural parenting facebook pages and popular belief spread on blogs is not scientific information and you shouldn't base your choices solely off that advice. nine times out of ten, i am will to bet those people, the ones giving you all the advice and scolding your decisions, aren't doctors.
i don't look down on anyone's choices - all we can do as parents is make the best ones for us at the time. i respect any choice as long as it doesn't purposely endanger a child. i have experienced a little bit of it all with these four kids: some are fully vaccinated some aren't, some were born with an epidural some practically at home, and some have eaten their own poo when we weren't looking - life happens and we just have to do the best we can to keep up!
i don't look down on anyone's choices - all we can do as parents is make the best ones for us at the time. i respect any choice as long as it doesn't purposely endanger a child. i have experienced a little bit of it all with these four kids: some are fully vaccinated some aren't, some were born with an epidural some practically at home, and some have eaten their own poo when we weren't looking - life happens and we just have to do the best we can to keep up!
so, to vaccinate or to not vaccinate...
i have talked about before, how when rowan and zoë were babies i got sort of shuttled through vaccinations. there was no real information telling me to look further into it, so if i trusted their doctor (and i am very picky) then i went along with most of what they told me. when i had stella, information and research and thoughts on the topic were going through a major shift. while i am more then smart enough not to buy into every article i read or idea i hear, there was a lot to be said about some of the new information out there - enough for me to do my own investigating.
we chose to stagger stella's vaccine schedule, somewhat following along with dr. bob's ideas and sticking to two shots every month after she was two and skipping ones like the chicken pox one (which she got, the chicken pox that is, and survived). we would skip them till the next month all together if she wasn't feeling up to it or battling one of her infamous ear infections. this seemed to work well for us, while we were protecting our daughter from possibly deadly (although rare) diseases, we weren't bombarding her system with alluminum, animal tissue, and other vaccine ingredients each time.
enter robin, born in the most natural way with not a single intervention entering his or my body, no immunizations (other then the vitamin k shot) were even offered and we went on our merry way. at his first appointment i turned down any shots (mainly the hep b) till further notice, i needed to refresh my memory on everything surrounding this topic.
something about this way he came into the world makes me want to leave him as natural as possible. i am scared of disrupting his demeanor and personality but i am equally scared of him catching whooping cough, so how do you decided? it is almost an impossible decision, for me at least.
i knew we would be going ahead with a few key ones. DTaP for one, there are major outbreaks yearly in our area and with all my kids in school or activities (last year we had to contact scares!) our chances go up for exposure. Polio, while very rare is bad if you happen to come in contact with someone who has brought it home from a trip, even my semi anti-vaccine midwives urge this one (however we'll wait till after two). i won't get into the couple other we will do and why and eventually maybe around middle school we will revisit the hep b.
his one month rolled around and it was the same thing, we would be waiting for now.
last week he had his two month check up and it was the first time, since stella was a baby even, that i felt a little pressured into a certain vaccine schedule and ones we should chose. i trust our ped to the moon and back, she take a more natural approach to most things and has never led me down a path i didn't like before, so there is a little bit to be said, when she insists on certain things...
i had originally planned to get him his DTaP right there, but with news of my nephew coming down with the flu, having just played all day with rowan, i opted out again so that robin's immune system would not be compromised in any way, if for some reason he needed to fight off the flu. she insisted that while she could appreciate where i was coming from that we come back next week and get that and the prevnar now because those are two she really worries about, especially right now. we're going to go along with this recommendation but are prolonging most others until after two years and then at that point will have a blood test done to check his immunity on some others.
i tell you all of this because it paints a picture of the fact, the choices you make are all your own. be informed, find a pediatrician or naturopath you trust. don't be bullied into choices by your peers or doctor, choose what is best for your family and way of life. use your heart equally with your head, if your instincts are pushing you one way or another, they are usually right.
i want to keep robin as natural as possible, while continuing to transform our family lifestyle into more natural living, so these are the choices we are making.
in the meantime, i plan to breastfeed for one if not two years giving robin ample ways to fight infection through immunities in my milk. we wash our hands a lot, take vitamins/supplements, and take every other precaution to stay healthy and avoid situations that can cause illness.
this being a hot button topic, any bullying will be deleted. that being said, i love to hear people's point of view on topics like this, do you or don't you? which schedule do you follow and why? if you limit, which ones do you chose?
4 comments:
This post was very well written. Most people I know personally are strongly anti-vaccine (and you're right, the info they are getting are not from medical doctors), but I believe that there is a middle ground somewhere. I think that for next baby I'll wait until 6-8 months before first vaccine, because my little man had such a hard time with it when he was 2 months, he didn't even want to nurse hours after he was is in so much pain, but at 8 months he hardly cried at all and was fine for the rest of the day. And I agree with you on saying no to hep b and chicken pox vaccine. Still trying to figure out what is the right thing for my family to do about this issue.
This is so hard as you want to make an informed decision for you baby and there is information that can scare the heck out of you on both sides. So far I've stuck with a delayed schedule....
thanks! ack, i would love to wait till six months to start too, and while obvs. the choice is all mine - we always have a serious outbreak of pertussis in our area and with school age kiddos at home i am just way to nervous about that one :/
I agree -- anyone who thinks they can bully someone else on what to do for THEIR children needs to find something else to do. So bizarre how mean people can be! I can't stand that.
That said, my son gets his vaccines. Many have been delayed because he has restrictive airway and oftentimes has breathing issues (he is too young to be diagnosed with asthma, but that's essentially where this is going), but what with his compromised immune system, we all (my pediatrician, my husband and myself) feel strongly about him being vaccinated. Something like, say, the flu can be a huge risk for his health -- huge. What is just a cold to some children ends up being a huge, chronic lung issue for my sweet boy. Any precautions we can take (and we do holistic supplements and the like, too), we do.
Sometimes his vaccines are broken up, sometimes they're delayed, but our pediatrician (who is a holistic counselor and vegan nutritionist on her off days as well, and she recommends all alternative treatments to us, like chiropractic to help with my son's breathing and salt therapy, etc.) and I are on the same page with wanting him vaccinated and still living a completely natural lifestyle otherwise. (Heck, he had terrible reflux which she helped us treat naturally with no medication ever during the first year of his life before it went away!) She calls his vaccine schedule "Ethan's schedule" which essentially means depending on his breathing, how it's going and what is hitting our area hard (like the flu is right now), that's what we'll do and when we'll do it. It's all tailored very much to him. Also, my uncle is the ER physician at the local hospital where I delivered and is probably the "crunchiest" doctor I know, no antibiotics, no Neosporin, etc., and recommended the pediatrician to me when I was pregnant and doing interviews. Since he is family and I trust and love him with my whole being, he also worked with us to create a vaccine schedule he felt comfortable with my son having.
I never feel pressured into the vaccines and I know before walking into the building what he's getting and what's going on and am really passionate about Ethan being vaccinated. Of course, what other people do is simply that: what other people do, and what is best for their family. No harm in that!
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