Vaccinations

4 month shots - so brave!

I’ve debated discussing this subject on my blog because it is a very HOT topic among parents, but after some thought, I’ve decided to post about our vaccination decisions for Aliyah.

I’ve really dug in and read and read and read on this as it IS scary - I’ve poured through the Dr. Sears sites, reports from the American Academy of Pediatrics and many autism and anti-vaccination websites. You hear so many people say “I had all my vaccinations and I turned out fine” But children today do have nearly 3 times more vaccinations than we received growing up.

I very much believe in the value of vaccines as they have almost eradicated very scary diseases like Polio among our population. Additionally, I continue to see new studies that have disproven the “autism scare" - but I have never been one to believe that we as humans know all of the effects of modern science and medicine (hence my personal choice to have a natural childbirth) and so I poured over all of the information from every side of the debate with a skeptical eye.

After looking at it all, Tyler and I decided that we fall somewhere in the middle - Aliyah is getting vaccinated on the schedule set-up by her pediatrician. We LOVE her (and her 5 beautiful sons) and trust her fully. One of her boys has autism and she has done a ton of research herself along those lines.

However, we did not give Aliyah the Hep B shot in the hospital because babies can sometimes have reactions to shots (sore legs, fever, extra crankiness) and we did not want this to interfere with getting breast feeding off to a good start - our pediatrician also recommended that we wait to start the Hep B shot for those same reasons. And as for now, we have chosen to opt out of the flu and H1N1 vaccines.

Our thoughts:

1. Because so many people are choosing to forgo vaccinations all together, diseases that were almost eradicated are beginning to pop back up in the US - measles, mumps, even cases of tuberculosis. Personally, I would be scared to get on an airplane (with people from all over the world in close contact) or even let her play on a crowded playground with other children for fear she could be put at risk at contracting something I could have vaccinated her against.

2. We plan to travel internationally with Aliyah when she is a child and we want the protection of vaccinations before we go.

3. Neither of our families have a history of auto-immune diseases or autism that would make her genetically at a higher risk for having a severe reaction to vaccines. There are many families that do have these genetic predispositions and for those families I can understand why they might choose not to vaccinate.

4. Yes, kids get 3 times more shots than we did when growing up, however, they receive a significant less amount of Thimerosal within those vaccines than we did (Thimerosal is a preservative that is approximately 50% mercury by weight - most vaccines are now made without Thimersoal at all).

5. (Here is a real hot button topic) In my opinion, based on ALL of the factors regarding our daughter and vaccines, we feel that is our duty to our family and our community to vaccinate our child. If every parent chose not to vaccinate, we’d see huge resurgences of some of these very deadly and scary diseases that have been controlled over the years by vaccines. Most parents who choose not to vaccinate do so under the assumption that these diseases are no longer an issue for our society and that they have blanket immunity due to the majority of children being vaccinated. This is true - but our decision to vaccinate her is, in our opinion, what is safest for Aliyah and for all of the children in our surrounding community as a whole.

We have chosen this route because it is what WE are most comfortable with for our child. Every parent has their own reasons and levels of comfortability with these studies - It is not an easy decision for anyone as we must weigh the benefits and risks of all options and decide what is best for our families.

So there you go. We feel really confident in the route we are taking regarding vaccinations and hope the same for other families facing this difficult decision.