To vaccinate newborn or not

Good. Life is too short to trawl through 20 pages of posts. Glad you are protecting your child.

Exactly.

Those people who had reactions to the vaccine, did they ever think how they would have been if they'd had the actual illness, after how they'd felt after the vaccine?

OP, vaccines have saved lives for over 200 years. Can you imagine your child having Smallpox or Polio?? Have your children vaccinated.

All the doctors are saying get the baby vaccinated. Why on earth would you listen to some random mum who believes in any old conspiracy theory?

Do your child a favour and get them vaccinated. It’s the caring thing to do.

antivax trolls can’t believe that anyone is possibly better qualified than them

Are you for real? This just attracts antivax rubbish. There is NO evidence vaccinating is dangerous other that social media rubbis

This is MN, not a forum for highly qualified and experienced medical researchers. 🤦🏻‍♀️

The thing is people's memories are short.

Mumps, measles, whooping cough all seem a thing of past, we forget how dangerous they can be.

We start researching clicking on random internet links and here we are.

@Ann3347 I'm afraid your posts on this thread is a prime example of the concept "a little knowledge is dangerous (more so than ignorance)". it's a Bangladeshi proverb - a so called underdeveloped country where despite being poor (obviously we all live b】elow the poverty line and have no access to healthcare), we still have great proverbs. and some of us can read and write!

you are making massive assumptions about these countries, firstly by putting them together all in one group.

it might surprise you that people in the 'underdeveloped' world are also human beings with human physiology! so lessons learnt there can also be applied to the bodies of people living in the west. also studies have to account for pre existing conditions etc. usually they will exclude based on certain criteria. I would disagree that people in underdeveloped countries have 'worse health' in general. there may be more mortality from acute illnesses but the incidence of diseases of affluence is much lower. people are more physically active etc. either way, the outcomes and criteria for significant findings in these kind of studies means the differences in populations are less significant.

just to give you some background I am a doctor who is from Bangladesh, but qualified here and have been working in the NHS for 10+ years. I also did extensive work in Bangladesh, especially in paediatrics. I also did a bsc in international health. there are far more qualified pp's who have responded to your comments.

you are right in that it's up to you what you want to do regarding vaccinations for your own family. I mean you could light your hair on fire and it wouldn't be anyone else's business ...until you needed to get down to the burns unit ... FYI i often work in the burns unit .. .... ( you can ask for a different doc if you are worried that as someone from an underprivileged country I am not fit to treat you). and thus it is your opinion on vaccines is all well and good until your kids... or some one else's kids get hurt.

ps: just out of interest... what is your educational background that makes you think your research will lead to more correct opinions than almost all the doctors in the world?

So you are protected as other people are vaccinated. Your refusal to be vaccinated and not taking that protective step for your children lowers herd immunity.

Some people cannot be vaccinated and your selfish actions risks others, as well as your own children.

I hope your children grow up with more sense.

Research? Are you medically or scientifically qualified? Reading some anti vax blogs is not research.

Vaccines save lives. Have you any idea how many infants died before vaccines meant hold didn’t die from what are now easily preventable diseases?

When I was backpacking in the himalayas a lady tried stopping people as we trekked past. My small group stopped I was the only female. She thrust her baby into my arms for help. He was very poorly. Two medics in my group diagnosed measles. No vaccination program in that area.
She thrust the baby back into my arms as the poor we mite took his last breath.
I will never forget it.
My children were vaccinated as soon as they were old enough

Wow, what a powerful story of the damage trusting anecdote, or one case, over the data can be. Thank you for sharing.

I hope Ewan is ok now?

Ooh are we cherry picking? Awesome. (You really need to read the whole thing.)

I always wonder if we see more of these diseases now partly due to environmental factors but also partly because the more susceptible weren't taken out by measles, diphtheria, polio and the like in childhood.

(I have zero scientific basis for this, but it's just a musing, and one I'm always curious that isn't given more weight by those who seek to look for causes of these phenomena. That said, I'm aware that cancer rates increase as the population ages. But the flipside is the awful sequelae of diseases like measles.)

Your kids were fine because enough other people got their kids vaccinated so yours didn’t get polio

This is Ewan, his mum is a good friend of mine. I have her full permission to post her story. She actively encourages it.

Mum never had a whooping cough vaccine, my fault actually. I had a convulsion after mine way back in the 70s. My siblings didn’t get their vaccines, GP advised against it, despite it being a plain old febrile convulsion and not repeated it was just how things were.

All 3 of my brothers and sister caught whooping cough. Somehow the 1 vaccine seemed enough to protect me. I recall with clarity though the horrific noise they made as they coughed and gasped for air. By some miracle all 3 came through it relatively unscathed.

Moving on to Ewan, his Mum was a neighbour. Her parents chose not to vaccinate after seeing me have the convulsion too. She fortunately didn’t ever catch the illness.

Fast forward 20 odd years. Ewan was bought to visit me at 4 weeks old. Whilst at mine his mum mentioned that she and the baby both had horrific coughs. When he started coughing my blood ran cold. Once you’ve heard the ‘whoop’ you recognise it. Trying not to panic her I advised that she went to A and E which she did. Poor Ewan, and her had Whooping cough. Ewan became so ill he had to be airlifted from the South Coast to Leicester to put him on the ECMO machine to reoxygenate his blood outside of his body. He was given a very small chance of survival. Mum and Dad had to chase up the country overnight with the fear that their darling little boy might not still be alive when they arrived.

He did survive, and he’s a young man now, but he has brain damage and is still very reliant on his Mum.

It turned out that Mum didn’t know she hadn’t had the whooping cough vaccine so offered no protective antibodies through her breast milk, Ewan himself hadn’t started his vaccination schedule yet. Shortly after the whooping cough booster was rolled out to all pregnant women.

To me the vaccination program is a minor risk compared to the potential illnesses.

The developed world has more vaccines and also has better standards of living, water, food etc. the undeveloped countries with lower vaccination levels have poor food provisions, more poverty, unclean water, little health care etc. You are more likely to fight off disease if you are healthier to begin with.
I didn't say the study should not include vaccine related disease it should, it should include general health i.e an individuals complete health record.
I'm comfortable with my non vaccinated stance and that I and my child are unvaccinated I'm equally comfortable that you have had vaccines. It's a choice and we are free to make our own decisions.

I was born before there was even a measles vaccine, let alone MMR. For reasons best known to her, when the vaccine became available and was offered, my mother decided that myself and dsis should not have it. And we never caught measles. All good? Well, no because when I was expecting my dc2, my dsis and dmum were in contact with someone who 24 hours later developed measles. It was my dc1 birthday and to be on the safe side, I checked with my GP who told me that as neither myself nor dsis had been vaccinated or had measles as children, we should avoid each other for 3 weeks just in case she caught it. The GP told me that measles in pregnancy is highly dangerous and causes miscarriage in a high number of cases. I can't tell you how much upset and worry that caused me. I had a rough pregnancy anyway, and to be told I had to avoid two of the very people who were supporting me made those three weeks very hard indeed.
I don't know whether your DC is a boy or girl, but not vaccinating them is not only dangerous to them, if they catch it, but potentially to your future grandchildren.

My sister didn't vaccinate her 3 children during the MMR debate/scare, she lost one to measles complications. Vaccinations save lives, it's a fact. I have vaccinated my children.

I had mumps, measles, German measles and chicken pox as a child

I was lucky. I was just poorly and miserable (and very itchy). Doctor came with medicine (no idea what) I was confined to bed and with the itchy ones, covered in calamine lotion

My sister had the same and her eyesight was affected by measles.

Thankfully I'd had the polio vaccine. And was given the BCG as a baby because my dad had TB. The diphtheria one was widely given

Most of you have no knowledge of those days so you can make decisions based purely on unfounded fear. If you'd been there it would be a no-brainer.