If you gave your child some of the recommended vaccinations but not all...

[MrsHuxtable]

how did you decide? Which ones did you think were really necessary? And which ones not so much?

I'm just wondering. I got all my childhood vaccinations and so did one of my younger sisters. The next sister reacted really badly to hers and so my youngest sister wasn't vaccinated at all apart from Tetanus.

I guess I'm going to ask my ex step-mum why she picked the Tetanus vaccination as the most important one.

I'm not sure you're going to get much helpful from this OP, as people's reasons, ime, seem to be very personal. It's also a very emotive topic, and similar threads often seem to go a bit weird on here.

Do you know why your sister reacted badly, and to which vaccinations? It may be that you can find out about whether that increases the chance of your dc having a bad reaction.

Mine got the first few lots of baby ones. TBH I hadn't done any research and was just so glad to have a DC that I didn't really think about it.

Then once we started weaning, it was obvious he had an egg allergy, then he came out in hives and clutched his throat after a tiny bit of houmous. At the same time I had a long conversation with someone who hadn't vaccinated and got to see the other point of view. As a result I did some thinking and talking and decided to postpone, possibly permanently the rest of the jabs.

I may give him a single measles vaccine and I'm definitely checking his immunity to mumps before puberty but that's it I think. He has fully allergy testing booked for december.

When I discussed it with my mum, she advised Tetanus, I'm not sure why really. I think it's pretty nasty if you catch it but actually quite hard to catch as the bacteria need to have no oxygen, so it needs to be a deep wound or have healed over. As usual, hygiene is key in avoiding these things!

an account of tetanus justthevax.blogspot.com/2010/12/tetanus-in-unvaccinated-teen.html

I personally find pertussis and hib most important in year one, MMR in year two. My kids are fully vaccinated on schedule (with some extras - DD had chicken pox vaccine, both get the flu shot since they both had the flu some years ago). For me, preventing illness is worth the (for us always) mild side effects of the shot. My (adult) niece just had pertussis and coughed for 120 days. We don't need that or worse.

Catherina, surely that post just shows how incompetent some doctors can be? Not cleaning a wound properly, not diagnosing tetanus etc etc. I mean, as much as she seems to dislike the people on the board, they are not medically qualified. The mother took the boy to the doctor several times - they were the ones who messed up.

bumbleymummy I assumed that Catherina's point here is that not getting the tetanus vaccine can be problematic in ways that are different to many of the other vaccines where human-human is the usual form of transmission for the related disease. E.g. if you haven't given you child MMR, then the GP will generally be aware if measles or mumps are doing the rounds locally, so will be tipped off to look out for it. Tetanus is going to be unique to your child, so they will be affected by the fact that GPs aren't going to be familiar with it.

Of course, you could also read the story as making a case that if the mother had got her son vaccinated routinely against tetanus then he would never have had this problem.

Where did the OP go?