Thoughts on the 1 year vaccinations please ?

[Ellamaee]

Positing on aibu in hopes to get more of a response .
my 1 year old has her 12 month vaccines on Wednesday, I wasn’t overthinking it until I seen TikTok’s of reactions to the vaccine , then all the comments saying how after the vaccine their child was having seizures, gave them health issues etc etc and how it is “literal poison” and that “they don’t make money if you’re not poorly, the vaccines are poison” also multiple stated they’ve never vaccinated their kids and they’re really healthy and never sick compared to those who have been vaccinated . My one year old is up to date with hers and now I’m absolutely dreading these one as obviously there’s 2 new ones she’s never had , am I massively overthinking this? I knowwww if she doesn’t get vaccinated she can get really sick, but then people telling me that it’s going to cause health issues, seizures, possibly Sid’s ? Is making me too scared to do it , I’m wondering if anyone has any experiences, and in hopes to reassure me that I’m doing the right thing by getting her vaccinated . I don’t want anything bad to happen to her I’m so scared . (Before anyone asks , yes I have bad anxiety as you’ll tell from my other threads lol) I don’t wanna pass it on to my daughter I just wanna do the right thing , thanks in advance

If you have anxiety and OCD, it may help you to step away from Tik Tok and other forms of SM. They are not great for mental health. The algorithms are designed to feed into your interests/obsessions and you can end up spiralling.

It really is best to stay away from forums like that. Unless you possess a higher research degree in immunology yourself, you won't be able to fully digest the information (and misinformation) you find there. Particularly after COVID, misinformation has grown exponentially around vaccines.

Consult health professionals and don't listen to the anecdote about your aunt's neighbour's sister's hairdresser's baby cousin.

There's coincidental stuff too

Like last week I was booked for my covid and flu vaccines. I had to cancel because the night before I got unwell
But if I hadn't got unwell until the day later, everyone would have been saying oh it was the vaccine when it was actually food poisoning
You don't know if you're brewing an illness already and it's sheer coincidence

The other thing is
They say oh it's poison. Then their child is incredibly unwell with say measles and in intensive care
What are they going to do then? "No medicine as it's poison? I need to do my own research?"
No, they'll be begging for whatever medicine can be given!

I think there’s a disproportionate amount of negative sentiment on social media because everyone who’s had the vaccines just goes about their day and it’s not a ‘post-able’ moment.

Wonder if theres a video on TikTok. “Got my child vaccinated today. Nothing happened. Waited through all childhood. They didn’t get a potentially lethal childhood disease. Nothing to report here.”

OP, I do feel for you here.

You are only 23 and the brain hasn't even matured fully until around 25 years old. And that's to remember, as well, that you haven't probably had the benefit of time for general life lessons ( apart from having a baby, of course).
Add in, that at 23, your formative adolescent years were, also probably, formed around social media and the assumption that all one reads on it can be believed. Not many schools teach critical thinking ( in a robust way, anyway).
As a PP quoted, on another thread Ronald Reagan said "Trust, and Verify". Verify means to use reputable sources. I was no fan of RR but the message is clear...look at BBC Verify, we have to be sure that what we read, and then choose to believe, is from robust, verifiable, reputable sources, not TikTok...this type of SM FEEDS your anxiety, it like a little gremlin in your shoulder, laughing, cackling at your spiralling distress. This is not want you want, is it?

If you truly want to tackle your anxiety, you need to actively come off SM for situations like this, I do wonder, whether there is part of you that feeds off the misinformation and the anxiety that it then causes?

It's doing you and baby harm.

Having said that, you appear to feel reasurred and able to go ahead and get your baby immunised. But this type of scenario will crop up again, and it will be tempting to feed off absurd, cruel misinformation again. This is how you could try and understand the nature of this, as being absurd and cruel.

The human psyche is programmed to dwell on bad news, sad stories, gossip...as PP have said, there are very few threads on TikTok that are pages long on how they immunised their baby, and it was all fine, is there?

I think the very first step for you in addressing your anxiety is to get off SM.

All the best, OP. By the way, a reaction to the vaccines is generally seen as a good thing, it means your little one's body is working to protect them against these diseases. ( MMR, typically produces a reaction 10-14 days post vaccination). Whilst it's never nice to see your child unwell ( especially if you're a lone parent), it is normal to have a reaction, typically, a bit grumpy, ( they may be achey), a temperature, maybe off their food, possibly upset tummy. Keep Calpol and Ibuprofen syrup to hand, weather the storm and know you're doing the right thing.

Threads like this make me so glad my school teaches children about fake news and how to judge online information.

Make whatever decision is best for your child but use real facts and research, not TikTok click bait.

The reason so many children who aren’t vaccinated are ‘fine’ is because they are protected from the spread of disease by the vast majority of children that are vaccinated.

If everyone stopped vaccinating, less children would be fine.

As pp have also said, TikTok anxiety is self-fulfilling, the more videos you see the more you will get of the same content because of algorithms serving you similar types of video. This will make your thinking skewed.

"The reason so many children who aren’t vaccinated are ‘fine’ is because they are protected from the spread of disease by the vast majority of children that are vaccinated."

OP, this is SO important to understand. It's called "Herd Immunity". If the majority didn't vaccinate, we'd be seeing masses more disease and death in our children, as the diseases then can spread, multiply.
You only need to wander around an old graveyard to see that, nowadays, you simply don't see the number if childhood deaths that we saw 100 years ago.
But its chilling to know that Measles is emerging again, as a real threat to health and life.

The small number of children who CAN'T be vaccinated because of being immuno-compromised because of chemotherapy or similar, are protected by the large numbers of us that do immunise.

Sounds like they don’t either 🤣

But are they actual experiences?

I used to work in Cardiology, there were several times that I had to explain to patients that an ECG just recorded the electrical activity of their heart.

And that whilst it is sad if someone dies they did not die because someone recorded their ECG.

After feeling fluey all day yesterday from my covid vaccine I woke up perfectly fine today.

I think Vaccines are a gift we take for granted in this modern world. We've forgotten what life was like before them. Children dying everyday from diseases we have now pretty much wiped out.

Get your child vaccinated its your job as a parent to protect them. And this to me is protecting them.

People who feel a bit rough 24 hours after any vaccine are experiencing what the vaccine is designed to do - in general stimulate the immune system to fight the virus albeit with an antigen from the virus/bacteria rather than the whole live virus/ bacteria

They haven't researched at all.

Thoughts?
Get your child vaccinated against diseases which frequently used to cause injury or even death, unless explicitly advised not to by a qualified medical doctor.

thanks everyone ! I am definitely vaccinating her , it’s just my anxiety but as i said , I won’t let that interfere with her health

You can have side effects from literally anything & those who’ve had side effects are the ones who are gonna make it known. My daughter had her injections - absolutely nothing to write home about.

It is part of the job spec and person spec as a parent to worry about your child even about things that you know are the best things to do - sometimes you have to do the worrying for both parents as the other parent can't or won't be of any help.
Even when they are fully grown and have their own lives and families you will still worry

Stay away from TikTok and get your medical advice from the NHS, not idiot influencers who are fuelling your anxiety. Vaccines are safe and will keep your child safe. By all means speak to your HV about them but if you have anxiety and OCD you will only fuel it by watching TikTok.

Vaccines are a hell of a lot safer then the diseases they protect againsr. Measles caused an estimated 2.6 million deaths per year before vaccinations were wide spread. It still killed an estimated 136 000 people in 2022 – mostly children under the age of five years. Vaccination rates not being high enough is one of the reasons there are still this many deaths.

www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/measles#:~:text=Vaccination%20decreased%20an%20estimated%20measles,000%20in%202022%20(1).

Medical advice on TikTok is for (stupid) gullible people who are dumb enough to fall for scaremongering rubbish.

@Ellamaee use your brain, delete TikTok off your phone, and listen to MEDICAL advice from the NHS which was written by MEDICAL professionals who have spent years of studying and researching.

Agree

Good thing I’m not taking medical advice of Tiktok then isn’t it ?

Jesus you're getting medical advice from tiktok!

My family has a lot of doctors in it. Every single one of them has veen the forst in line to get their children vaccinated x