Immunisation - would you give them extras?

[Blondeinlondon]

We are off to the US for crimbo
It is DH's homeland and MIL is a doc
They give more childhood immunisations than here in the UK

Given the choice would you get the extra immunisations??

no...

They even give a chicken pox vaccine

Have you asked why .....

probably because people will pay for it!

and because it's inconvenient... stay at home, nurture kid,... or get a jab and avoid desase and possible scars...??? call me scenical (sp?)!

No.
I think they have enough and i agree about the chicken pox jab, it is just because of work commitments and people staying off.

You can't overload a childs immune system they are in contact with viruses and bacteria everyday having a vaccine is just the same.

I have researched lots of info on vaccines since the death of my Dd and research shows that a baby's immune system could, in theory respond to as many as 10,000 vaccines at one time. if all vaccines normally given in the first two years of life to american children were all given at the same time, then about 0.1% of the immune system would be used up.
This information has come from the JCVI (joint committee on vaccinations and immunisations)

My Dd died from pneumococcal meningitis aged 19 months, in the UK the vaccine for this disease called prevenar still hasn't been introduced but has been used in the US since 2000 if you are going to have more vaccines when you are over there then have the prevenar.
Have a look on the pneumococcal meningitis thread.

Yes I would get extra's done. All mine have had chickenpox and if I could have saved them having to go though it I would have. Not being bothered to keep them in and look after them has nothing to do with it.

I don't get it. If you had the chance to vaccinate your child against more diseases, why wouldn't you do it? Surely, not getting sick is better than getting sick. And these vaccines have been used on hundreds of thousands of people, so they have been checked pretty thoroughly for safety.

I wouldn't. Have a vaccine damaged son. Would only give a jab if I thought they were at high risk of getting the disease and being damaged from it. ds2 and ds3 haven't had anything (ds1 had the full first round).

You'll get 1001 different opinions on here though, so do whatever you feel comfortable with.

no

vaccines do not infer life-long immunity and diseases mutate

I think each vaccine should be on a risk-benefit

cp is not a bad illness .. ok its uncomfortable but relatively mild for most cases

DD had MMR and her immune system was so compromised (IMHO) that she developed / contracted pneumonia 7 days later

personally no, dd1 had the full lot, dd2 had the basics (no boosters), dd3 has had the 1st lots of immunisations only. dd1 allergies go off the scale with each of her jabs, the week following the Hib booster at 3years old (there was a problem with the course she had as a baby and everyone got called for boosters) was awful. she had urticia most ofn the week and her behaviour was appauling, she was like a demon child (dd1 is usually a placid child, the change was shocking). she then crashed for a few days, like she was getting over flu.

Lets just hope your children don't contract any of these life threatening diseases.
I know someone who's child died from chicken pox complications he was 4.
My Dd wasn't at high risk as you call it from getting meningitis but she did and i had to sit in a PICU for 2 weeks watching her die.

I am campaigning for the introduction of another vaccine in this country along with other families who have lost children and have severly brain damaged children.

NEVER THINK YOUR CHILDREN WON'T CATCH THESE DISEASES AS THEY ARE RARE, I NEVER THOUGHT MY DD WOULD GET MENINGITIS.

I really don't understand why you wouldn't want to protect your children?
I agree some vaccines may cause damage but don't rule out all of them.

Amyjade- what happened to you was horrible, but ds1 will never live independently, will probably never talk, because of vaccine damage. It's always about shades of grey. Of course I don't want my younger 2 to die, but I also want them to grow up and lkive independently and not need their bottom wiped aged 30. The trouble is there are no guarantees whatever route someone chooses. I feel that as my younger 2 share 50% of their genes with their brother they are probably more at risk from jabs than mr average.That alters our risk/benefit ratio.

Presumably people who vaccinate do so because they thibk "If I vaccinate then they will be definitely protected against the disease and are so unlikely to be vaccine damaged that I'm not going to even consider it". That's the thought process I used with ds1.

Now my thought process is something like "If I vaccinate they are likely (not definitely) to be protected against the disease but they are also very likely to be damaged by it". The likelihood of damage is difficult to put a figure on, but the consequences could be severe.

It's not a simple yes/no.

Amyjade, what happened to your dd was awful, but we have to weigh up the pros/cons for our own situation. I am all for flu jabs, as to catch the flu would kill my husband. (compromised immune system due to heart condition, he needs a heart transplant), but feel that i cant risk more reactions for my dd's. dd2 will have her MMR at 18months+, dd2 will not be having the booster. they have hadthe men c jabs as babies, plus the basic jabs.

Some vaccines don't even contain live bacterias so i think each individual vaccine needs to be reaearched full before making a decision.

Sorry to hear about your Ds and if i was in your shoes i would probably feel the same.

If my Dd had survived she would never have been able to swallow for herself due to a childhood disease so there is defanitly two sides.
Each child is different but if more and more people refuse vaccines then an epedimic of all these diseases could start then the risk of catching them would be even higher.

oops i mean dd3 not dd2.

yes. i am American. i follow the CDC guidlines for immunisation. especially Prevenar.

i agree w/AmyJade 100%.

i remember when some lady said, 'oh the best thing is a good diet and breastfeeding.' to which my dad replied that it didn't stop the polio epidemic. he himself was bf'd for 2 years and ate the nutritious diet of many indigenous people - pulses, rice, lots of fresh veg and fruit.

didn't stop him and his peers from cathing a strain of measles that killed some of his classmates.

yes I would.
better than suffering with the disease.

I really think it depends on a) the child, b) the vaccine.
ds has had the 6 in 1 (Germany) as I didn't see any reason for him not to, but I queried the make he received the first time as I had read about some cases of severe reactions. As it happened it was withdrawn before he had his 2nd lot anyway. After reading Amyjade's posts I've gone for the Prevenar too, and will probably have him given the Men C (not included in the 6 in 1 here). However, I am still undecided as to whether to go for the MMR or have singles. Jimjams' (it is you isn't it?) and misdee's decisions are the sensible ones in their situations, while others, including, generally, me, may feel that in a considered assessment of their child and any risks, it would be more sensible to vaccinate.

yes I would go for it/them.

A little boy in my street died from measles when I was a child and I always remember my mum saying if there had been a vaccine against it I would have been first in the queue.

As far as chickenpox goes my eldest DD had it and wasn't too bad, but she gave it to me and I was literally bedridden for a week. I couldn't even get to the toilet properly. I had the lesions inside my eyes and everything and it was by far the illest I have ever been. There were two reports in the papers around that time about men my age who had been fit and well and caught chickenpox from their kids and subsequently died.

My nephew lives in America and he had the chickenpox jab -if it was available here my DDs would have had it too. Whilst I accept it's rare, chickenpox can kill, it's not always just a few itchy spots.

Same with all the other childhood diseases I think but of coure there are always two sides to every story and if I'd had a child vaccine-damaged then I cannot imagine what I would do vaccine wise should I have another....

im amyjades sister in law, we are a very close family and were all ther for her and her DP while DD was in hspital and when she later died in a childrens hospice. while i am very sorry that someones child is vaccine damaged, i think the risk of that happening is far lower than a child cathching one of these horrific ilnesses. i know we are still grieving, but i would just like to say, if you had to stand helplessly by, and watch a beautiful healthy much loved little girl( not a statistic) literally wither and die before your eyes, and watch as her parents lay in a bed with her untill that moment comes, with their hearts breaking as she slips away from them, then i would like you to say that you wouldnt have your child immunised. my DD is now 19 months and she has had the prevenar and will have the pneumovax when she is two.

It would really depend on what the imms were for and also on the child. Ds1 has reacted badly twice to imms to the extent that he turned grey and then stopped breathing. We were very lucky that he was already at the hospital both times when this happened. Each new immunisation involves taking a huge risk so I weigh up the pros and cons each time. He's had the MMR and Men.C jabs but I turned down the offer of a flu jab.

Ds2 has had no reactions whatsoever to imms (touchwood!) and so he has so far had everything that is usually offered to children of his age in this country. I might be more inclined to go ahead with extra imms for him.

In ds1's case the risk of death from imms is much higher than the risk of him catching a particular disease/illness.

prevener is one i would consider, but not chicken pox vax. i caught rubella as a child, and am immune, i am hoping some protection from me will go to dd3 via my breastmilk.

I was in the US for 6 months when Ds was aged 2-8 months.

We had the prevnar as meningitis is so scary. We were only there long enough to get 3 of them instead of the usual 4 (the 3rd one he had just before we left even though it was a bit earlier then they usually give them). The paediatrician said that 3 jabs gave very good imunity so was worth having even if we couldn't get the full 4 so we went for it.

Men C is not given in the US at the moment so I caught up with that when we got home.

In the place we were they gave individual injections for polio etc so DS had 5 jabs at once each time he went. I was too much of a sensitive mum and said to withhold the hep b as I didn't think a baby needs it until later and hated seeing him cry at the injections.

Anyway when we got back a nurse asked if I had had the hep b jab in the US as the health professionals in the UK are lobbying for it but the govt thinks it is too expensive at the moment. She said it was really effective and would prevent a lot of young adults getting hep b. Anyway I now wish I had given DS the hep b jab as well.

One thing though - as we were only there 6 months our health insurance was quite basic so had to pay for them and prevnar was very expensive at $90 a shot. Then we found out that they would give the injections cheaply ($14) if we were not covered by insurance. They made a loss on this so I really don't think that the money is the reason they offer injections. Doctors believe they are necessary and important as do I.

Assuming your child doesn't get bad reactions (mine doesn't) I would get as many as are offered (assuming the immumity they give is worth it).

Most vaccinations need more than one over a minimum period of time to be effective.

Anna