Who has time to read the whole book? I read the last four chapters. Well, skimmed. Enough to gather that I should be worried about aluminum in vaccines, and enough to find the two schedules the doc recommends — one very conservative one for when he’s beseeching anti-vax parents to consider a few, and one less conservative but still alternative to the rather aggressive schedule the American Academy of Pediatrics (or whatever they call themselves) prescribes.
I took the book with me to our 8-week appointment.
First we talked. And weighed the boy. 9 pounds 10 ounces. Doing just fine. That bump I found behind his ear is a swollen lymph node, or possibly a benign cyst. (Did I mention how the “calm” thing is ironic?)
I showed the doc the middle-way schedule, which he approved, although he’s concerned that separate vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella (rather than the controversial combo vaccine MMR) no longer exist. Fortunately, they weren’t part of today’s dose.
On this day, we would get two vaccines then (rather than five). One oral — Rotavirus, one shot — DTaP.
The pediatrician left the room and a few moments later, the nurse came in with the tray of stuff.
We started with the oral. A little plastic envelope-like bubble packet of fluid. My baby was lying on the table, looking up at me with the biggest widest most trusting blue eyes as he chugged down on the liquid.
I was panicking.
The nurse, sensing my obvious discomfort, was chatting away. Oh, don’t worry mama. This is very sweet. He likes this, see?
My fear was taking over my brain. Over the top. Highest gear anxiety. It felt like this nice man was using sugar to poison my dear sweet pure vulnerable child.
Why couldn’t I feel the other way? Like maybe grateful for advances in medicine that enable me to protect my child from disease. I would probably be a lot happier if vaccination meant taking my child out into the woods to have a shaman wave a feather over his head.
I’m really not that informed about the risks. I kinda put my trust in the kindly Dr. Sears — the little bit I’d read — and the idea I’ve always had that some vax makes sense.
The shot came next, and frankly, the idea that the needle might have hurt him was NOTHING compared to the freaking I was doing about putting chemicals into my baby.
He was fine after. Nursed, slept.
I was still a mess. It was raining outside, and freezing cold. I’d done my best that day to layer him up — we don’t actually have winter clothes for him, and my one attempt at buying such, a fleece thingy from Chez Gap, I bought in the wrong size. Plus he’d pooped and peed on two outfits already, but veteran mom that I am, I even had more clothes in the diaper bag. So thus layered in cotton and buried under a fluffy blanket in the baby bucket, he was sleeping.
I decided that if there was an easy parking space outside the neighborhood used baby clothes store, I would stop. A tiny detour on the way home.
There was a space right out front.
I deposited sleeping baby-in-bucket near the register of the tiny boutique and scoured the 0-3 months rack. Another mom and baby were there. She recognized me from prenatal yoga. I mentioned to her, and saleswoman, that we had just come back from our vax appointment, and that I was a bit wrecked. Yoga mom didn’t say anything, in that thick silent way that leads me to assume she’s in the anti-vax camp (a HUGE camp in the bay area), though I didn’t inquire.
I found two plaid flannel shirts — one red, one blue, some beige velour overalls, a cream zip-up wool sweater with t-shirt material lining and deep red snowflake pattern below the collar. All for 30 bucks. Kind of going to be dressing my boy like a butch lesbian, which is also a big camp in the bay area.
As I was paying for the clothes the saleswoman offered, “I read a lot of books on vaccination and in the end, every one still recommended doing it.”
I appreciated the clothes and the sympathy.
* * *
Meta:
I’ve been afraid to write about this experience because vaccination is a very hot topic, and I haven’t wanted to open myself up to criticism. I’m already critical enough of myself for my choices. But then I couldn’t write for two days. So here I am, coming out as a vaccinator.
The baby has been very fussy since the appointment, more trouble sleeping than usual. But otherwise seems to be fine, as far as immediate side effects go.
People need to get over themselves with their superiority around their choices.
To the silent disapprovers among us: Your choice in diapers, baby food, baby soap, baby clothing, vaccination or not, soothing style, school, neighborhood, automobile, carseat or anything else, is simply that – your choice, given your circumstances. Sometimes it’s not a choice exactly.
It does not mean you are a “better” mom, a “better” environmentalist, “healthier” or somehow more virtuous, pure or clean. We all live on the same planet breathing the same fumes and ingesting the same microtoxins we can’t identify. We are all doing the best we can to navigate this world.
Only a woman who is insufferably smug would judge another mom for any of her decisions. Sheesh.
One of these days you’re going to give in on something you never thought you would, and you will need the compassion and tolerance of your sisters.
And in the end, how freaking important is it?
Can readers tell that I am sensitive? It’s just that my firstborn had great difficulty nursing so I had to use formula and felt very ashamed of it. Who needs the self-criticism?
Leila you so accurately describe how I have been feeling these days about mommy criticism. We do what we can with what we got. What we got being experience, knowledge, money, family, circumstances, and so many other things that play a big part in our decision making.
I feel exactly like you do Julie when we are in the doctor’s office giving the kids vaccines. They are so trusting, and I feel like I am facilitating the poisoning of their little bodies, and then when I think about not doing it, I also feel like I’m letting them down by not protecting them from these diseases. The doctor’s are never very helpful with making choices on this and they love to work the guilt routine on ya. My husband is totally against them, and I hesitate with either decision, to or not to vax. In the end, I am choosing to postpone the MMR with my 2nd child until he is 2, Hepatitis until just before puberty, and I said no on the rotavirus because they had just recently added it to the vaccine schedule when he was born. With my first, I didn’t even do any research, because I just never really thought about not vaccinating – my oldest has followed the almighty bible from the AAP on vaccines thus far.
Definitely no judging from me.
NoMasNinos’s last blog post..Belated DeLurk
dear leila and lizzette —
You both freaking ROCK! Thank you!
This has been a rough road for me. I really appreciate hearing your experiences.
Thanks for sharing! I’ve been agonizing over the vax thing, and have only 2 more weeks to reach a decision. Will definitely get my hands on that book, and carry it around a bit, then hand it over to my dr with likely the same “middle of the road” request. We’ll see how that goes…hopefully she doesn’t “dump” me as a patient if I don’t want the whole shebang
eva’s last blog post..Megan’s First Hike
Um, vaccinations are why our lifespan is 70-plus years. I shudder inside whenever I hear about anti-vax (cute term, btw) people. I hope the schools prevent their sickly children from attending and infecting others. Cheerio!
Thank you all! Mommy criticism is awful. We are in this together and we all have different experiences. We need to support eachother, no matter the differences. Motherhood is hard enough.
Re: schools and anti-vax-ers – don’t worry, the most severe anti-vax types usually end up homeschooling. Then they host infection parties where they expose their little darlings to homeschooling mumps sufferers, so as to build up their immunities. Don’t laugh. I used to read homeschooling newsgroups. This is for real.
Now I had measles, mumps, chicken pox AND rubella as a child, and I didn’t die. But these diseases do cause great harm to a certain percentage of the population. And diptheria kills.
It is true that the more granola/groovy private schools in affluent, liberal enclaves like Berkeley/Oakland do have more trouble with non-vaccinated children than public schools do. Public schools just say – tough luck, vax or leave.
OTOH – it is always good to ask questions and be cautious. Why not be conservative about the vax schedule? What harm could that cause?
And flu shots – I let my hubbie and pediatrician talk me into them for the kids one year, but not again. I am not convinced that the shots do anything useful and I want my kids to get immune to the various strains as they run through the population. If and when the biggie flu virus hits, I want my kids to have as many immunities as possible.
Amen, Leila, on choice and criticism. Being a mom can be difficult enough without someone else piling the guilt on.
Actually, public schools DO let children who have not been vaccinated into the public school system as long as they fill out a waiver of some sort. I know this as I taught at many different public schools and had to verify that all my kids had all their shots or parents filled out a waiver. I don’t know if it is the same in all states. Generally, all the anti-vax kids I have run into are healthy, and aren’t a problem to the other vax kids.
NoMasNinos’s last blog post..Gray Skies are Gonna…
OK I’m wrong about public schools – it does vary by state.
Re: “generally anti-vax kids are healthy” this is not about generally. This is about that statistical number of kids who die from some of these diseases. As I wrote above, I got all three of MMR plus chicken pox in childhood. I was healthy and fine. But some significant number of children out of a thousand do die of these diseases without the vaccine. And the epidemics can be very very costly.
How about this on diphtheria: “Mortality/Morbidity: The most widely quoted diphtheria mortality rate is 5-10%. It may reach higher than 20% in children younger than 5 years. Disproportionately high rates of death were observed in individuals older than 40 years during an epidemic in the States of the former Soviet Union. Infection with the gravis strain is associated with higher mortality rates.
In the 1920s in the United States, 15,000 deaths were reported annually. ”
from http://www.emedicine.com/emerg/topic138.htm
Some have argued that the anti-vax people are only skating by because the rest of us get our shots, and there are still so few of them. But by not getting their shots, they keep the reservoirs of disease going in the population.
Still I am all in favor of questioning doctors closely about the vax schedule and being conservative about how much and when, etc.
Cheers!! For talking about this and admitting your fear about it. I too stress and worry and becomed filled with anxiety on “vaccine day”. I feel comforted to know that you feel this way too! It’s such a hot topic but ultimately a personal decision, thanks for opening up.
I’m so glad my experience is useful to others! And that the post sparked thoughtful discussion on the topic. Thanks again, everyone!
I just bought the vaccine book, inspired by your post to worry in retrospect…! Definitely lunch next week post-yoga, if you’re free.
People who refuse to vaccinate are insane. Have you ever seen a 2 month old die from pertussis (whooping cough)? Or an 8 month old die from Hib meningitis? It’s very sad, and they don’t have to if they are vaccinated. But if too many of you “I did my research on the internet and from Dr. ‘Make $$$ off your anxiety’ Sears” looked around, you’d realize the multitude of measles outbreaks this year in the US are due to declining vaccination rates in this country. Do you realize measles kills 500,000 people worldwide each year (about 1 in 500 who get it)? Do you really want this disease reappearing in your neighborhood and infecting your baby? Trust me, if your little one gets any of these vaccine preventable diseases, there’s a good chance they’ll wind up in the hospital getting way more shots than they’d ever get from all the vaccine pokes they’d get in their whole life. And there’s no evidence of a link between MMR and autism. The original paper was retracted (the lead author failed to disclose he was being paid under the table by a personal injury lawyer trying to sue a vaccine company) and even Dr. Sears recently basically just admitted there is no link based on very recent research which did stomach biopsies on autistic and non-autistic children.
Wow, Dr. Mike. That’s intense.
I’d prefer not to insult my readers and friends who choose not to vaccinate, yet I appreciate you finding my blog and voicing your opinion.
I am glad to hear (again) that the original paper linking MMR and autism was bad science.
Did you see my post, or read the articles I read, about the new suspected link between autism and TV-watching?
By the way, Dr. Sears strongly advises parents vaccinate in his “Vaccine” book, so he’s really not the enemy in this situation.
In fact, the book has special chapters addressing the anti-vax community, attempting to change their minds, or at least get them to do a minimum vaccine schedule.
He does suggest that if parents are concerned about MMR, there are ways to obtain the three vaccines (measles, mumps, rubella) separately and space them out.
If he was more extreme in his opinions previous to that book, I don’t know about it.
From my own experience, I have been happy with my decision to separate out the vaccines one at a time (rather than four or five in one visit) to reduce the potential side effects and temper the load on my baby’s developing immune system. I was also glad to have a conversation with my pediatrician about whether or not the Rotavirus vaccine was necessary, and to choose WITH HER not to continue it.
I, myself, got the pertussis vaccine on my second day in the hospital, post-partum, and my baby has had DTaP and all of his other necessary shots to date, albeit more slowly than the AAP schedule, and with additional costs (from the co-pays per visit).
* * *
Further note to my readers: I tried to contact Dr. Mike but the email address he provided doesn’t seem to be real. I researched his visitor path and discovered that he was googling the phrase “criticism of Dr. Sears vaccine schedule.” I found that interesting, so thought you might too. Because this old post is not one that often receives hits. And he seems in his comment to be mounting some kind of campaign, and yelling at someone, though if he read the post thoroughly, I don’t know if he means me.
I tried googling his search terms and came upon this brilliantly-written post on vaccines, concerns about environmental and immune system overload, and links to autism and other behavioral issues:
http://www.svmoms.com/2008/08/every-child-by.html
I met Kari at BlogHer08, briefly, and I thought she was an incredible woman — just from those few minutes. This post she wrote seals that opinion.
Curious that Dr. Mike didn’t rant at her too. I may check a few more links to see where else he went. Since my boy is napping at the moment…