aibu (and overly pfb) to ask my anti vaccination family to vaccinate themselfs against whooping cough before they come and visit my new baby at christmas?

[honeytea]

I'm wondering if I am being completely over the top. I don't live in tge UK, the country where I live don't habe a whooping cough problem so they are not offering tge vaccine to pregnant women. I went ti my Dr this morning to ask him if I could have the vaccine as we plan to travel to tge UK before the baby has his 1st vaccinations (3 months here) the Dr said there is no way for me to get tge vaccination here in Sweden even privately.

I think we will just wait to come to tge UK till after the baby's first vaccinations.

My family, parents and siblings (one of my siblings is a child) are coming to visit us at christmas, the baby will be only a week or two old. My family are anti vaccinations, the sibling who is a child has not been vaccinated I'm not sure about everyone else.

I have the option of traveling to tge UK and getting the vaccine myself, this would be costly and hard work as I'm heavily pregnant.

Op you are not being UR to either insist on vaccinations or to delay visits until your baby has been vaccinated. The current boom in WC diagnoses is significantly higher In the uk than last time the disease came round (which it does every 4 years approx). Babies do die from WC as they do not have as great a capacity to fight for breath as older children and adults (and it really is a fight).

' I can promise you, my children are healthier inside because they have not had their bodies violated by th toxins in jabs.

Moreover, their brains are healtier and their autism quite mild in comparison to some, because they have not bee n subjected to vaccines'

Come on, you don't know any of this. It is your belief that is the case but you do not know your children are 'healthier'. Problem is - if they catch a preventable illness and are seriously unwell only then will you KNOW that you were wrong in your statement that non-vaccinating has improved their health.

Obviously I don't know your dcs and you don't know mine either do you? I'm sure yours are lovely and very well at present. So are mine. Difference is I know I have safeguarded the future health of my children by protecting them as far as I am able from serious preventable illnesses.

You haven't answerd my question btw. Do you really think the population of this country would be 'healthier' without the vaccination campaigns?

My ds (3) is still unvaccinated (due to strong family history of reactions - whooping cough vaccine nearly killed my dsis). I would not vaccinate him because someone else wanted me to, but I would respect your wishes and stay away until yours was vaccinated. You can't demand that they are vaccinated. I think probably for you the choice is whether you want to see your family at Christmas or not.

So Leonie - your thesis is that your unvaccinated children have better supported immune systems than vaccinated children? So are you saying that the population as a whole would be healthier if nobody was vaccinated? That 300 years of development has in effect been a waste of time? Surely that's the logical extension of your argument?

I was wondering when this would turn into a pro/anti vaccine thread!
I want the vaccine because as others pointed out wc can be deadly for new borns and they have no immunity, why would I risk it?
I am also breast feeding to ensure all antibodies I make pass through my milk a double precaution.

Tbh I am not sure why the whole pro or ant vaccine debate is relevant.

The question is about whether the op is entitled to ask.

My view is that she can ask and then people can chose whether to agree or not.

Their reasons for not being vaccinated are unknown and not really the point are they?

I ask only because this thread is going to become a vaccination barney and I am not sure to what end?

I guess that's a sort of answer then. Sorry to be 'boring'.

Leonie spouting bollocks about bottle feeding and vaccines again?

Plus ca change . . . .

Might help if you didnt go around poohpoohing other people's choices. You wont get five minutes' away with saying summat like that about formula milk, which not only has an individual detrimental health impact but a public health one too, but its okay to bash the choice not to vaccinate?

I have every right to have an opinion on something that has directly effected me. I wasn't vaccinated and I think it was a stupid misguided decision. I feel unfortunate that tge option to protect me from disease was kept from me, Leonie you may find one day that your own children feel let down by your choices fir them. I only hope you offer them fell vaccinations when they are old enough to decide fir themselfs maybe early teens and then you deal with the hassle of fighting to get them vaccinated against the things you could have easily done when they were small.

I have spoken to my parents and they feel it is a reasonable request. It wasn't an ultimatum, I think their support outweighs tge small risk even if they refused and I made that clear, they are going to enquire if they can get at least the unvaccinated child and young people vaccinated before they come.

OP YANBU to not want them to visit. YABU if you expected them to vaccinate. However, are you going to stop your baby going out at all until after all its vaccines. I assume that vaccines are not mandatory in Sweden. You possibly come into contact with people without knowing it.

Also OP the part about 'I have never used the NHS' isn't true is it? Whether coming to the UK and having the jab would be fraud, i am not going to comment on as I am not sure where I stand.

But you have used nhs resources before, I am sure you have. I don't get the 'i paid tax and haven't used it so can do what I want' argument.

monkey its not scaremongering, no one is trying to scare anyone but discussing WC.

You possibly come into contact with people without knowing it. i meant non vaccinated people, not just people in general. :)

When other kids at school get ill, they're out for a week. When mine catch the same bug, they might be affected for 24 hours and hardly ever need time off. They're robust and brilliant and healthy.

I am genuinely interested in how a doctor can prove this to be true, as the poster says in their next post that its medical fact. I don't usually post on these discussion but am really interested in that theory.

I have 2 children both vaccinated, one picks up everything going. The other doesn't. My best friends children are vaccinated an neither ever get poorly.

my first born was a very sickly child despite me having him vaccinated and breast feeding for 12 months.
My second child has been very well in comparison, also vaccinated and breast fed for 6 months. So I think its the child and not what you do.
I have a friend who's little one is 5 & only had a fever 3 times! also vaccinated and breast fed.

I don't think you are being unreasonable at all but they may find it very hard to be vaccinated.. I was under the impression it is only being given to pregnant women. That said, I could be entirely wrong. It would also depend on the GP's surgery budget and how many vaccines they can actually give out. From what I've seen and heard (on here and in RL) a majority of GP's weren't even aware of this whooping cough vaccine- Its very early days.

www.nhs.uk/conditions/whooping-cough/pages/introduction.aspx

It is only being offered to pregnant women I'm afraid. Its a shame that they are not offering it in Sweden.

My Dr today said that there is something very close to 100% vaccination rate in Sweden, people tend to do the same as each other here and I guess vaccinations are no exception.

I don't feel like I paid tax so I can do what I want I feel like the impact of me having 1 vaccination (when I have had very few even as a child in the UK) isn't a really bad thing to do. I considered giving birth in the UK, I'd stay with my parents for a few months and that would be my permanent address for that time. I think that would maybe be unfair as it is likely that I will have a c-section and my birth would cost tge NHS thousands if pounds.

Its really good to hear your parents understand you concerns and are considering it.

Thats ideal, really. If they genuinely don't feel forced into it (which is sounds like they don't) it means they can visit and no worry for you.

YANBU at all to ask.

Although if it's not part of the standard NHS offering, then they'll have to get it done privately. I'm in the US and here you can just walk into a pharmacy and get a pertussis booster for about $20.

I would certainly do it if I were to come into contact with a newborn. Whooping cough is no joke. I think I'd be equally concerned about the adults as they are far less likely to be symptomatic than the children.

Fantastic that they are open-minded and considering your opinion.

Sookiesookie - there is zero evidence that Leonie's children are any healthier than others because they're not vaccinated. Maybe they'd be even healthier if they had been vaccianted, who knows? My children have had more vaccinations than is typical in the UK and yet they're hardly ever sick, so go figure! Other than the vaccine preventable illnesses (luckily they haven't even had to miss school because of chicken pox since they've been vaccinated against it), I have no evidence that they are as healthy as they are because I vaccinated them but I could make the same assertion as Leonie did. It would have just as much meaning and value.

No, it just shows what a ridiculous thing it is to say 'my children are healthy because they are vaccinated' or indeed ' my children are healthy because they are not vaccinated'. You don't know.

I think it would be reasonable to ask them not to visit until your baby is immunised. My dd was very poorly with a rare heart condition when she was a baby and a common cold made her seriously ill (ventilated) on 2 occasions. This was during the swine flu scare and I asked that people stayed away from us unless they were vaccinated and took a lot of precautions to keep her away from bugs. Luckily the condition was completely cured by an operation when she was 6 months and she is able to live a completely normal life, but I totally understand your point of view. I didn't lean on people to be vaccinated, just stayed away from them if they hadn't been.

As an aside, I think immunity and the ability to throw off illnesses is down to individual children and has nothing to do with whether they are vaccinated or not - I think bf probably helps out a little if you have a virus and your body is fighting it whilst you are bf your baby, thus protecting them from the virus you have, but not so much in a life long context. My ds1 has had the least breast milk of all my children (exclusively bf for 2 months and mixed fed till 7 months, then formula - the younger 2 got/are getting well over a year of exclusive bf) and is also the most robust from a health point of view.