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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

.. to be really hacked off with my Mum over vaccinations

311 replies

MrsTwinks · 10/11/2011 16:50

Me and DH are TTC. A passing comment from a relative about my mum and doctors got me thinking about my jabs so thought I'd better get my rubella checked.

Just back from the doctor and it turns out all vaccinations on me stopped when I was about 2. Everything. Now IIRC 1988 was pre the MMR scare, but even so I could understand that, except its all of them. They have recommended I have a polio and tetanus now, but I'm also missing BCG etc.

AIBU to be really fucked off at my mum for a)kinda for just doing it to start with but honestly really b) never bloody telling me!!

I work with kids, shes been on at me to TTC for literally years, and not once has she mentioned me not having had my jabs. The tetanus one really fucks me off too because as a teen I cut my leg open really badly on rusty metal, it got infected so bad even the holes from the stitches got all infected and she didn't let/make sure I had a tetanus booster. I suspect also she never told my Dad because he went ape when I nearly didn't have my meningitis c when I was 17. He was a SAHP with me at first as he was a student so I wonder if maybe it was only him who took me in the first place.

I'm still really mad 'cos I ust discovered it ontop of alot of other stuff she did but now its like she coulda been playing russian roulette with not only my health as a child but my kid's if I hadnt thought to check it iykwim.

and breathe

OP posts:
mathanxiety · 11/11/2011 15:38

Well said on all points, Neuromantic.

bruffin · 11/11/2011 15:46

"Both the paper and his media converence more than insinuated there was a link"
Apologies typing to quick, the paper didn't find a link but the in the news conference afterwards he insinuated there was a link and suggested single jabs, not mentioning that he already had a patent for a single vaccine.
He also claimed in the vaccine patent that the mmr was not safepatent

Original poster
MrsTwinks · 11/11/2011 15:47

Not sure on chicken pox, I assume so as while Mum was "unsure" when I asked, I have been exposed several times in the last few years and not gotten it. She seems to have forgotten many things from before I left home TBH so I don't trust her recollection of anything. What she does recall is often wrong or her account changes. Been thinking I will go in and talk to the doctor as its impossible to know by asking her

OP posts:
DesperatelySeekingPomBears · 11/11/2011 16:27

Like I said Leonie, I certainly don't expect you to change your mind. What baffled me was the term 'science, or whatever'. It's just a theories, right?

So's gravity. Best load your shoes up with lead.

Sidge · 11/11/2011 16:29

Bunbaker "Incidentally, the polio vaccine is a live one and you need to be even more scrupulous about washing your hands after using the toilet for about 6 weeks afterwards."

Not any more, we now use inactivated polio in UK vaccines since 2004, it isn't live and not a transfer risk.

Haka · 11/11/2011 16:33

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

KouklaMoo · 11/11/2011 17:04

Sossiges - 'I very much doubt that the uptake rate of anything (including free beer) is "90%".'

The uptake rate for the tetanus jab in the UK in 2010 was 96%. In 2009 it was 95%.

Source HPA.

Here

So you 'very much doubt' wrong.

saintlyjimjams · 11/11/2011 17:15

Live polio vaccine is no longer used. Although the uk was one of the last to stop using it.

mrsravelstein · 11/11/2011 18:06

jimjams sorry for delay in replying, yes the single tetanus was a course of 3 jabs, each one a month apart.... so that may not help you much!

cory · 11/11/2011 18:09

saintlyjimjams Fri 11-Nov-11 10:31:40
"And at least with tetanus you can get a passive antibody jab if you have an obvious tetanus injury."

I thought that was the one the OPs mum would not allow her to have when she had the deep cut? That was the bit I found upsetting, not the decisions about her routine jabs.

silverfrog · 11/11/2011 18:17

to be fair, the OP says "didn't let/make sure I had a tetanus booster" which is ambiguous.

it could be that she didn't ask about a tetanus booster, rather than denied one that was offered.

FWIW, I had a dogbite injury last year, quite deep and nasty, and the nurse said she would rather I wait and kept an eye on it, and come back if any signs of anything being wrong, rather than give me a tetanus shot. but I have had my full 5, so she was as worried about increasing side effects as she was about tetanus, iyswim - so very different scenario from OP's

lugwump · 11/11/2011 18:38

Do doctors necessarily have a complete record of jabs? Don't you get a lot of them at school?

Has mother confirmed that you did not have them? Did you/she REFUSE a tetanus when you had your cut? Not that it would stop wound infection.

What is mother's take on it all?

I am a newborn here so had to think hard for TTC meaning. I presume it's when you stop doing it just for fun.

Bunbaker · 11/11/2011 19:02

"Not any more, we now use inactivated polio in UK vaccines since 2004, it isn't live and not a transfer risk."

Oh, thanks for letting me know. The last time I had anything to do with polio vaccines was when DD (age 11) was a baby, so this would predate inactivated vaccines.

Original poster
MrsTwinks · 11/11/2011 19:14

yes its when it has uses other than fun lugwump Every treatment you have appears on your medical records so it should be there, but thats why they are testing just in case.

Can't ask Mum because a-stressed to hilt with her DP in hospital and b-she wouldnt nessesarily get it right if she didnt intend to lie. Once came up in conversation with a friend of her DP that my brother went to a private school(under assisted place) but apparently I failed the test so didnt go according to her. I never took the test. to be brutally honest she puts way too many drugs into her system to remember anything these days. But that doesn't excuse her not telling me for the last 10yrs, when she wasnt so bad.

OP posts:
perceptionreality · 11/11/2011 19:16

I think yabu because she would have done this with your best interests at heart even if you disagree with her pov.

ArthurPewty · 12/11/2011 07:35

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

SHRIIIEEEKPoolingBearBlood · 12/11/2011 07:52

do people really check their immunisation status before they TTC? If so they are a hell of a lot more organised than me!
And I don't think there can be many people who think immunisation = 100% guarantee of not getting the disease. That well-known fact is not an argument not to be immunised, what a strange idea.

bruffin · 12/11/2011 08:11

My rubella status was checked when I was pregnant the first time. Not sure if that was because I had not been vaccinated. The reason I was not vaccinated was because I had caught rubella from my mother a few weeks before I was due to have the vaccine at school.
Rubella comes in epidemics every few years,so is not that easy to catch as a child and why so many unborn babies are effected when there are epidemics.

bruffin · 12/11/2011 08:15

My rubella status was checked when I was pregnant the first time. Not sure if that was because I had not been vaccinated. The reason I was not vaccinated was because I had caught rubella from my mother a few weeks before I was due to have the vaccine at school.
Rubella comes in epidemics every few years,so is not that easy to catch as a child and why so many unborn babies are effected when there are epidemics.

WhoseGotMyEyebrows · 12/11/2011 08:42

Wow OP! What drugs does your mum take? YANBU!

Zipzap You should see your GP!

Bunbaker · 12/11/2011 15:43

Leonie I realise that you have very good personal reasons for not vaccinating your children against anything at all, but I don't think that you should be implying that vaccinations in general are a bad idea.

How do you think smallpox was eradicated? Why do you think that polio is virtually unheard of in this country?

I will think very carefully when it is time for DD to have the HPV vaccine because she has problems with her joints, but I will cross that bridge when the time comes.

mathanxiety · 12/11/2011 16:58

Strange how anyone can be so sure their child will not catch an infection that they could potentially catch in exactly the sort of circumstance that tetanus is most likely to occur, yet also be sure their child would be the one in thousands harmed by a vaccination that could potentially do damage.

silverfrog · 12/11/2011 17:16

I am really not sure what you mean by that, math.

I am not at all sure that dd2 will never develop tetanus. but I am reasonably sure (as in, there is enough reasonable doubt, to my mind) that it would be unwise to vaccinate her. this is based on her own medical history, not as sibling to dd1 (although that too is enough to give me pause, tbh)

why the one (me not vaccinating dd2 for reasons which are medically accepted) shoudl lead to the other (your assumption that I assume she will never develop tetanus) is quite beyond me.

mathanxiety · 12/11/2011 17:20

My post is in response to Leonie's:
'And yes, I will refuse tetanus jabs for mine when they have large cuts as well. Tetanus is actually entirely more difficult to catch than the wrongly informed sheeple masses think it is, and an open freshly bleeding and properly cleaned/cared for wound is the wrong environment for tetanus anyway'

saintlyjimjams · 12/11/2011 17:24

Well she's correct that an open freshly bleeding clean wound isn't a huge tetanus risk. Puncture wound a different matter.