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

Hi OP. I have a daughter who is 11 months and I was always adamant I'd get her vaccinated, but before every vaccination I always get a bit nervous. I think it's natural when you have a young child, but ultimately I trust the scientists and the research and that vaccine roll outs have been very effective in preventing death and disability from a number of diseases.

What is it about the covid vaccine that gave you doubts?

what research have you done?

Vaccines save lives. Look at what measles does, chicken pox, polio, whooping cough. And then decide to give your child the best chance at not getting any of those

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.

You're 'absolutely fine' because other people vaccinated. They are for the welfare of the child and society.

You're fine because you're standing in a the middle of a group of 1,000,000 vaccinated people and the virus has to get through them to get to you and your kids...

But if that virus did get to you...you'd be fucked.

Your children could end up blind or dead or permanently disabled...and that's your choice.

You're that penguin in the middle of the huddle, nice and cosy and warm going "what storm? What dead penguins that got caught out? I'm okay, I'm toasty and warm"

And considering you come from a family of doctors... But don't know anything about the false autism and MMR claims leads me to believe you're talking utter fucking bullshit.

Thank you - this is the kind of thing that has caused doubt in my mind, and why i wanted different perspectives on things.

When you say you’ve done your “own research”, I assume that means you have hired a vast laboratory, and have employed a huge team of highly intelligent and educated scientists over successive generations, who have studied in great depth the development of various vaccines and their results? Or have you just read some articles online?

I have met a few people who have decided, not through necessity, not to have their kids vaccinated. They have all been thickos.

Of course you should vaccinate your baby.

It will protect not only them but the wider society (unless you’re not going to allow them to interact with anyone else).

This is interesting…

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.

That suggest that you don’t have medical concerns around vaccines rather you don’t like being told what to do? You are free to ignore calls and reminders. You are free not to get upset if you receive a generic reminder that some people may find helpful. You are free to do as you wish just as you are free to deal with the consequences of your freely made choices.

Yes, vaccinate your baby.

People who don't and then say, "well, my kids were fine" are benefitting from other people being vaccinated... And then there are people in countries where they can't vaccinate and their babies are dying at far higher rates.

My own mother nearly died of measles as a child, before the vaccination programme came in.

For god sake. Yes! You should 100% vaccinate your child ffs!

What reassured me is the doctors and nurses and scientist who I know personally all had their own children vaccinated.

Does someone being killed in a car crash stop you driving most days? Does the person who choked on some food and died stop you eating? Did you cutting your finger on a knife stop you using knives?

No.

If course it fucking didn't.

She sounds nuts to be honest 😳

Unless you have a scientific degree, doing your own research will largely mean watching YouTube videos? Useful, informative but ultimately just opinions.
I remember being told in a lecture that the only two interventions that have made a significant difference to human health in the last two millennia are improvements in sanitation, and vaccines.

Came here to say this. Googling stuff isn’t research, it’s googling stuff.

There’s a lady who has commented saying she was severely injured by the covid vaccine and it’s things like that that stick in my mind.

Things like ‘it’s a money making exercise’ it just worries me so much and i don’t know why these negative things stick in my head so much over the positive ones!

I know instinctively it can feel totally wrong taking your tiny baby to have a needle stuck in them. I do get the worry, but you do need to think logically about this. There is a reason the nhs gives tiny babies vaccinations, it isn’t box ticking it’s literally to save lives. Imagine if your baby got measles and became seriously unwell, but you could have stopped it all with the vaccine. How awful would that be.

No she's down a quick Google and everything she's found points to vaccination and she doesn't like it.

She'll be waiting a long time to find some actual research and peer reviewed evidence that not vaccinating your child is safer than giving them immunisation...

I’m assuming that you had all available childhood vaccinations?
Give these to your child. The facts are that vaccines save lives. Do not risk a dead, blind or brain damaged child by not vaccinating them.

Your children benefitted from herd immunity because other parents did the sensible thing. Aren't they lucky.

No it absolutely doesn’t - there’s no need to be rude because im actually really grateful for your reply and it does help.

So you'd better stop doing anything that might cause injury....

Driving, walking, exercise, using sharp tools....

Well no chances are she wouldn't be fucked. With many of this diseases chances are they'd get sick and then recover. With a risk of worse happening. Don't sensationalise. OP absolutely should vaccinate but the language used around this is often unhelpful and silly.

I was not vaccinated as a child, I did survive but also had to go through having measles, whooping cough and rubella 😬.

My dd had a bad reaction to the MMR, I didn’t want her to have it but my gp and health visited pestered me weekly until I took her in. I’m not anti vax but I do think it should be a choice and we shouldn’t be forced into it. Saying that without vaccination measles would be pretty wide spread and would take a lot of lives, you only have to walk around a grave yard and see how many kids it took before the vaccine.

Well, it is a box ticking exercise, because at population level, vaccination is by far the best solution and it is good for the economy for people to not be ill. The NHS doesn't care about individuals.

Vaccination is cheap, dealing with the illnesses is expensive. And as a parent, having to take time off to look after sick children is stressful and can create problems with employers, quite apart from the possible long term effects on your children. So avoiding your children having illnesses is a good idea from a selfish perspective as well!

Yes there are some very small risks. There is a vaccine damage act for a reason. But the chances of something going really badly wrong are very small indeed - the childhood vaccinations are established vaccines, and are very safe.

If you look at illnesses like polio or meningitis, it really is a no-brainer to have the vaccinations.

I hope this helps OP.

Vaccines aside, I'm sorry but having "faith" in science is as good as having faith in a deity. You're blindly trusting something just because you can't spare it your own individual thoughts. Plenty of research that says X Y Z was good for you 80 years ago was pushed by companies looking to make profit with "facts" to back it up. The same thing happens today. Science as a field should show facts from fiction, as per scientific method of proving or disproving something. But scientific research as a field can be as flawed as any other industry that involves money and bias.