To vaccinate newborn or not

[confusedaboutclothes]

I know this is a very sensitive subject, but i’m asking please for FACTS only - I don’t want answers like ‘because the NHS recommends you to vaccinate your baby etc’

Id like to point out i’m not ‘anti vax’ as such, but covid really opened my eyes to researching vaccines etc i’ve done my own research on whether i should be vaccinating my newborn but it’s hard to find unbiased facts.

What I don’t like, is the pressure that is put on us to do as we’re told with our babies. I don’t like the constant reminders, the phone calls and the pressure to vaccinate - it all feels like a box ticking exercise not because the NHS are actually worried about my baby.

Please be kind, I really am confused about this and would love some different perspectives

I didn't have the MMR. Still autistic. I did have mumps. Very very poorly. Mum nearly died of measles back before the NHS was around.

Vaccines save lives.

A couple of people on this post have commented saying it’s a money making exercise etc and unfortunately those comments (wrongly so) have made me questions things.

This is a crazy way of looking at things. Your baby will be vaccinated against diseases that have killed thousands or even millions of people over time.

What is 'money-making' about vaccinations? Do you mean that pharmaceutical companies make money by selling the vaccines ? If so, well, yes - are they supposed to do it for free?? Think of all the money they have spent on developing the vaccines, on clinical trials, and in manufacturing.

What irate the life out of me with these types of threads and topics , people assume they have the same level or knowledge or research as professionals that have had years of trainning/actual research (not google) and just in same way someone would say my child needs surgery and I'm wondering if I should do it or some random I've found on Internet! We use professionals for the job what they are trained for vaccinations save life's. We know this due to some childhood illnesses that have become Extinct ( well I am aware since anti vax that now needs to he reviewed) I think thay tells u all u need to know. Child death were way higher before vaccination s and now since anti vax movement illnesses that were wiped out r coming back, it's the children that cannot get vaccinated I feel sorry for as it's not their fault if they get something that would massively effect them or kill them.

chef's kiss

Why? What about the Covid vaccine has been so problematic for you?

because the NHS recommends you to vaccinate your baby etc
is based on hard facts. What other 'facts' are you expecting? Hard scientific facts don't end where your feelings begin.

I mean it took me five minutes of intensive, er, looking. I wonder why PP's research has been so fruitless?

Impossible to say, really. Maybe her anti-virus software isn't working and Google has malfunctioned.

I always think the existence of the NHS is such a useful counterpoint to these claims.

The NHS isn't there to make money. It's desperate to save money wherever it can. The NHS backing vaccination is such a good indication that the evidence shows that the current vaccine schedule creates a healthier (and less costly to the NHS) population overall.

The JCVI in particular is pretty brutal about cost/benefit.... just look at the decades of debate over varicella.

Vaccines do save lives, they also prevent blindness, deafness, brain damage, heart disease which can and does happen as a result of the diseases they prevent. I can’t understand anyone who wouldn’t vaccinate their child.

I am into Genealogy and discovered that several of my ancestors died as the result of a Polio outbreak in London in 1902. My great aunt lost seven of her children, including an adult daughter who was the mother of the four grandchildren who also died. They died with days of each other. She wasn’t the only one in the community who had suffered such losses, I looked through the burial records and found dozens of other families in the area who had all succumbed to this terrible disease.

Good job they'll likely be surrounded by people who have been vaccinated therefore giving them protection.

I hope your stance doesn't come back and bite you.

My sister's too

This. I never felt comfortable vaccinating my first born at such a young age and decided to wait until he was older. My reasons for even looking into to it was that my brother suffered anaphylactic shock after a vaccine and a few years later so did my nephew. My nephew then started having seizures and was diagnosed with West Syndrome. He’s an adult now and has significant learning disabilities . Is it all connected? Who knows. My eldest is now 25 and has never had a vaccine. My other two are teenagers also unvaccinated. It’s a difficult decision.

The German study only looked at children upto one year of age.

To quote the Taiwan study...'The majority (74%) of our study’s participants were over 40 years old. The mean age was 53 years old. Of the total number of participants, 43.8% were male and 56.2% were female. Vaccinated participants had a slightly higher proportion of concurrent conditions than did unvaccinated participants, including hypertension, chronic kidney disease, diabetes, COPD, and depression.'

Absolutely not! My research wasn’t really research at all as i’ve admitted - I wasn’t sure where to start properly or where to find solid facts. That’s why i’ve come on here as i
knew there would be more educated people like yourself who could advise better

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.)

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?

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

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?