To vaccinate newborn or not

Hi OP. I totally empathise with your situation ! Having a newborn makes you feel so protective and it’s totally natural for you to question injecting a substance into their body. All 3 of mine have had theirs but I remember having this feeling every time. Can you speak to your midwife or health visitor about it and express your concern ? They will have heard it plenty of times and will not judge you! Or your GP. Maybe they can arm you with the facts to put you at ease . The fact you’re unsure about it shows how much your love your baby and want the best for them. Anyone jumping down OPs throat , try to remember how it feels to have that precious new born on your arms. That plus hormones and lack of sleep. Have some empathy ! X

If you’re looking for fact based evidence look for some medical studies. You won’t find anyone with any sense on here that isn’t opinion based. I was never vaccinated as a child, nether was my mum, and my children havn’t been either and we have all been absolutely fine. Vaccines are pushed because they make money, not for the welfare of the child.

that being said, not all of them are dangerous, it just comes down to preference. I come from a family of doctors who also chose not to vaccinate their children (my sister also is a virologist so knows a lot about vaccines).

the MMR vaccine gets a lot of grief for potential links with autism - honestly I don’t know about this either way, however I do know that when given to a baby under 18 months it can affect the baby’s stomach lining in a negative way.

its purely a personal choice. You will often get a biased answer form health care professionals as they are taught to push vaccines so do some research and make your own decisions.

there is no right or wrong answer OP

I 100% have faith in medicine, research and vaccines. Both my boys have been vaccinated and I’ve also paid for the shots which aren’t covered.

But I will say that one of our close family friend is a GP and she doesn’t vaccinate her kids. She said that she doesn’t trust what’s in it.

The pressure is put on so that people don't become complacent. So that people see and hear the reasons for vaccination. Don't let the fact that you feel pressured stop you from vaccinating your child. Not liking the pressure isn't a reason.

Plus as said before, vaccines save lives.

CP is going to be added to the UK vaccination programme.

Another way to look at this...

Vaccination costs the NHS millions of pounds each year. The NHS only funds effective treatments. Vaccination saves them millions each year.. the cost of dealing with the rampant diseases... and the excessive deaths.

Back in 2012/2013 there was a whooping cough outbreak. Babies died, too young to be vaccinated. So pregnant women were vaccinated, bringing it under control.

People only question vaccines when there are no outbreaks and no danger. When its your child's life, you feel differently... and honestly none of the pregnant women I knew, including myself, questioned the need for that whooping cough vaccine even though it was aeap of faith it would transfer the immunity to the baby. It hadn't been tested.

When it comes down to it, non vaccination is a luxury belief.

Even people with undergrad degrees in the subject mentioned know they know nothing.

Also when my DD was 3 she got chickenpox and spent 30 hours in A&E under observation due to a complication.

She is a child who rarely gets sick and ended up with a whole army of medical staff checking her.

I was severely injured by the Covid vaccine (MRNA). DC still have all their regular childhood vaccines.

People have been severely injured by the Covid vaccines (my injury diagnosed in hospital and accepted officially, I met many others in a similar situation). There needs to be a distinction between those with Covid vaccine injuries and the antivaxxers who are doing a lot of harm as they discourage all vaccines. The health authorities have not helped the situation by not being transparent about the scale of Covid vaccine injuries and helping those impacted. Unfortunately this has led to distrust of all vaccines.

We are so lucky in this country to be offered a vaccination programme for our children, open to everyone, regardless of income, status etc. It's one of the best things we can do for both our children, and for children who cannot, for health reasons, have the vaccines.

People who choose not to vaccinate, and then say 'well, my children are ok' are forgetting that their children are ok only because others have chosen to vaccinate. Health officials are worried at the falling take up of vaccinations, and, as a result, at the re-emergence of (sometimes deadly) diseases that people had worked so hard to eradicate in this country.

You would probably have got away with not vaccinating 20 years ago. But as these illnesses increase in the UK, it's more important than ever to get your child vaccinated. There isn't the herd immunity that there used to be.

You don't find anti-vaxxers in countries where these diseases are still endemic and killing unvaccinated children. They can see the consequences first-hand if they don't vaccinate.

Nail. On. Head.

You should question why the NHS, which is on it's arse both financially and through staff shortages, would bother spending all that time on money on vaccines if they weren't proven to work.

With respect the vaccines your newborn would get are long standing and have exceptional research verifying the millions of lives they save.

However, if I was about to welcome a newborn I fully appreciate your concern. While there were countless lives saved by covid vaccines there were issues. These issues may have been absolutely awful for a tiny proportion of the population.

I do believe it is because we saw the vaccine process accelerated and under the microscope.

Please protect your child and others by having the standard vaccines. Nobody wants to see a devastating measles outbreak for example and your choice could lead to it.

By all means take time and consideration of the extra protection of the covid vaccines.

I'm going to have to leave this thread because it winds me up that such uninformed ignorant people can have kids when the millions of women who struggle to have children and would put them first, can't.

I presume that you are aware of how much shit there is on the Internet?

Have you restricted your research to peer reviewed papers in well recognised scientific journals or are you reading any old crap that Google churns out?

I think there are many different kinds of anti vaxxers, who have different reasons for their beliefs, but what is common to all of them is some kind of feeling that they know better, that the wool is being pulled over our eyes, and a lack of understanding of how vaccines work, are tested, and are privileged enough not to know or care to learn about the effects that not having vaccines will have. ("My kids aren't vaccinated and are healthy..." ignoring herd immunity gained through....vaccination).

You don't find anti-vaxxers in countries where these diseases are still endemic and killing unvaccinated children. They can see the consequences first-hand if they don't vaccinate.

Well, there IS no grey area, OP! Vaccinating a child could save its life, or the life of another child. Anything else is conspiracy nonsense tinfoil hattery.

Who cares why anti vaxers feel so strongly? I don't know why that would factor into your decision at all tbh.

Speak to your GP and make your choices from there.

What did covid open your eyes to? The covid vaccination saved thousands of lives and allowed us to return to (something like) normality. It was an overwhelming success.

I think you need to look carefully at the credentials of the authors of whatever material you’re reading about the covid vaccination. Are they scientists? Are their claims peer reviewed? Are they promoting a book, lifestyle or product?

But the bottom line is they say you want the best for your baby. The best and only way to protect her from these illnesses is vaccination.

Just crazy and very scary that you would even think about not vaccinating your child.

Anti-vaxxers feel so strongly because they are very badly informed and wilfully ignore the overwhelming scientific evidence.
if you truly want what’s best for your child, you would vaccinate them.
I really wish you could travel to other countries and see the horrors inflicted on families and babies due to a lack of vaccines. Death and disability. We are so lucky here

When you say you've done your own research, what on earth does that mean?

I kind of understand where you are coming from. I know I had a rotten pregnancy and birth and DS was quite poorly when he was born. I was just coming to terms with it all then felt like I was being flung into what felt like a conveyor belt of checks and vaccinations, and it seemed a bit overwhelming. You’re being asked to have all these vaccinations administered to your tiny newborn. Then as a previous poster refers to, there was the MMR controversy.

I did have second thoughts about whether to have DS vaccinated but did go through with them all according to schedule and don’t regret my choice. He was relatively illness free throughout childhood apart from chickenpox which the UK doesn’t vaccinate against anyway.