Is it safe for my 3 month vaccinated baby to hang out with an 11 month unvaccinated baby

[mamabunni]

Is it safe for my 3 month vaccinated baby to hang out with an 11 month unvaccinated baby ?
Thoughts on how to navigate a friendship/situation like this ? I respect her choice however I want to keep my babe safe. I'm comfy with being out in the world and building their immunity however unsure about this particular situation.

Yes

Yes

Yes

What's the point of vaccines otherwise?

Why ? We haven't yet had all his vaccines ? Only the first two.

The risk still exists but is lower. The bigger risk is the unvaccinated baby who can get preventable illnesses that would be harmless or mild to a vaccinated person.

There is still some risk to a vaccinated baby however.

He has only had the first two vaccines so not fully vaccinated yet ! When he's fully vaccinated by 1 year I would be totally comfortable, however I'm looking for advice for the time inbetween.

Yes your child's vaccinations are in their system.

I would not respect their choices though.

Totally agree.
Also the age difference may have an effect? As her baby is older and may be able to handle an illness more than my younger baby who is still developing their immunity ?

Despite not being vaccinated, it is still quite unlikely that the baby currently has a disease but no symptoms. Your baby won't have full immunity against the diseases yet, but the risk is still low. You wouldn't know which babies had been vaccinated at a baby group, for example.

Disclaimer: I still think it's stupid not to complete the vaccination programme (assuming no medical reason it can't be done).

At 3 months, isn’t your baby only partially vaccinated? TBH I wouldn’t have thought it’s worth the risk. Should be covered for whooping cough if you had it during pregnancy everything else might be an issue though.

It’s fine.

I wouldn’t be ok with her choices though and it would honestly a deal breaker for me, not because of the risk to my own child but because I can’t abide morons.

I had a similar situation to you OP. We have distant family whose children haven't had any vaccines and we only saw them once in DD first year and I felt relieved about that.

As you said after one when your DC has had the MMR I would be fine with it.

On the other hand you don't really know who you have come into contact with that may or may not have had vaccines. For me I suppose I just felt more comfortable not really seeing them.

Is this person a good friend you would normally see a lot of otherwise?

I'm aware that we won't always know who we come into contact with ! However at our baby classes they're normally the same age. As her baby is older he has stronger immunity and can handle illness better, where as my baby may be more vulnerable do you think ?
She's my best friend since birth - 28 years and our families are very close to 🫠

Could you hold off until after 4 month vaccines when baby is more robust and has had their boosters? The only one after that is MMR and measles isn't so prevalent that seeing the other baby would be a higher risk than seeing the public in general. It's more than likely safe but if an extra month would give you more peace of mind, and your baby's immune system time to develop, I'd just invent some excuses until then ☺️

I don’t think I could “ respect the choices “ in regard to basic baby imms. I don’t understand it and never will. But I’ve seen babies / small kids sick , really sick with both whooping cough and measles.

depending on the relationship with the parents that’s be low contact if related or bye bye if not ….

( and I will never forget that my mum - who was born in 1928 had twins go off to the fever hospital from her class at primary and only one returned - diphtheria 😢). She remembered that all her life.

On an individual case, yes it's OK, as long as the unvaccinated baby isn't showing symptoms of an illness/known exposure to chicken pox or measles or whatever, and your baby isn't immune-compromised in some way.

There will be lots of individuals who are unvaccinated in the population for various reasons - individual parental beliefs, legitimate medical concern, allergies, missed appointments, international move and the baby was never caught up, age, lots of things. Plenty you would never even know about.

The thing that is important is the herd vaccination rate ie how many people in general in the population are immune. For a lot of diseases this is already high, and so you don't need to worry; your baby is very unlikely to come into contact with someone who is passing on infection markers for that disease, whether they are vaccinated or not.

I haven't read this article so not sure if it is an accurate explanation or not, but the diagram in it has a really good example of why this matters:

https://theconversation.com/what-is-herd-immunity-and-how-many-people-need-to-be-vaccinated-to-protect-a-community-116355

Also remember every vaccine that your baby has it's the first one which offers the most protection, booster doses just top up the protection to be even better/last longer. The only diseases your LO will not have been vaccinated against yet at all, but will be later, are MMR, chicken pox if you opt for that/it gets added to NHS register, flu, and HPV.

Out of those, HPV is irrelevant as it is sexually transmitted, MMR are mostly kept at bay by herd immunity/partial herd immunity, chicken pox and flu are the only things they are likely to come into direct contact with, and it is less common that babies under the age of 6 months do get these - probably mostly because they are not mobile and touching things yet, but we also know that some protection is transferred from mum's own immunity during pregnancy. You might have been offered a flu jab yourself for this reason.

I had someone like this and more and more crazy things like this just came out over time. The final straw for me was when she refused to brush her child's teeth with toothpaste 'because Flouride is toxic'. No longer friends, I am open minded but that was a step too far for me. You might find the same happens to you op, anti vaxxers have form for thinking some very weird things.

This is ridiculous. What you do you think parents do with older children do whilst baby is under 1? Keep them separated no they don’t.
obviously if any child had an illness they shouldn’t do a play date but if both kids are fine on the day I don’t see a problem with it at all.

Well it's time to end that friendship.

Playing fast and loose with your child's health isn't something I could get on board with

Ignore my message I mis read it apologies. Missed the part where the child is unvaccinated. That is tricky , but in the same breath you don’t know the children in baby groups etc are vaccinated either.

I'm a paid up operative of Big Vaccine but I think this is a terrible principle on which to live your life (probably would quarantine them off during an actual disease outbreak, as much for their sake as yours, but otherwise...)

@Unseenentity for me it's one of the very few things I see as non negotiable. I have vulnerable family members and I see it as being very selfish if you don't, it's for the good of everyone. I appreciate not everyone will feel like that though

Love this response thank you for your knowledge ! I’ll give that article a read. I understand heard immunity however I remember reading that the percentage of vaccinated babies is currently below the WHO recommended threshold - yikes !

Yes it is for measles, because measles needs a very high rate of vaccination to achieve herd immunity. But even without a perfect level of herd immunity, the fact that most children are vaccinated against measles is still helpful because it all reduces the spread among communities. If you are somewhere with a high rate of unvaccinated children e.g. a city with a lot of immigration and/or large antivax population, then it might be more of a risk than if you live in a smaller town where most people get their vaccinations. You could always ask your health visitor or GP clinic nurse at the next vaccine appointment or weighing clinic what they think.