Reactions to MMR - how long do they last?

[MrsMoppetMama]

My DD (13 months) had her MMR 11 days ago, she had a bad reaction after about 3 days (high temp and trouble breathing) and we took her to urgent care center. Although this has now passed, she seems to be really out of sorts and has stopped sleeping through. Her normal routine was brilliant as she went down from about 7 - 7. Now she is waking every two hours and is very unhappy. Is this normal? is this because of her MMR or is it just a phase? She has also stopped taking her bottle before bed, is it likely that she has weaned herself? Help! It's been pretty easy going with her up to now so a bit stressed by all this.

I equally see threads from mothers worried to an extreme because their baby isn't pointing at 9 months, smiles at others but not at it's mother, who sometimes sulks, who sometimes flaps it's hands....the list is endless and my heart bleeds for these posters who clearly have very healthy and happy babies but whose anxiety is clearly ruining their early-year experiences. It's really sad and, I think, out-of-proportion to the real risk of autism. You are clearly in a different class saintly and have very good reasons to worry.

Elaine You say I am freeriding on others vaccinating against diptheria. Not sure why your stopped there at one disease? Anyway, why would you care? If you feel vaccinations work and are safe, why would you care?
Is it not the case that I am freeriding on the horrors suffered by others when their children are vaccinated? Have their children not been used as guinea pigs to make me feel that vaccinations are not a risk worth taking for my child? I look back over the years here as well. The live polio vaccine was a cause of polio in some and the old whooping cough jab caused some cases of brain damage. There is a real history here of vaccines going wrong. It is a not a new thing.

Sossiges and AccuracyRequired added the Polio thing to a different thread about some schools witholding the Cervical Cancer jab (I don't know why they wanted to add Polio to it, but they did). I didn't find their posts very clear but I thought they were probably trying to create distrust in OPV, so I did my best to reply. Didn't get anthing disproving what I had said from them, but there was some vague and unsubstantiated smearing.

What's the actual point you want to make about Polio OPV?

Tabitha - if your DC are not vaccinated at all, then they may well benefit from herd immunity where it exists. This is a selfish act (have a look at cote's cost/benefit analyses on other threads).

I hope you don't drive your precious DCs around in a car either, they risk dying you know. In fact a lifetime risk dying in a transport accident in the UK is 1 in 240. Risk if you never get in a vehicle: ZERO

Risk of catching polio from a polio vaccine (now superseded by a safer version): 1 in 2.4 million.

In fact a lifetime risk dying in a transport accident in the UK is 1 in 240. Risk if you never get in a vehicle: ZERO

Not zero because pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists do get killed on the roads.

Ahh, LaVolcan. Quite correct, not zero...but what carries greater risk: vaccinating against polio or choosing to drive/cross the road etc? Which, was in fact, the point of the post.

We all take risks. Many, many, many women in the UK every year choose to risk the lives of their unborn, completely healthy babies by having an amniocentesis. A one off, potentially disastrous procedure. This is when faced with chances maybe as little as 1:200 that the child has Down's. One study Wiki quotes gives the chances of loss at 1 in 1,600. Compare these probabilities to that of catching polio from the vaccine.

We don't give the opv here against polio, we give the ipv which is more expensive, doesn't prevent transmission and is much safer than the opv. The opv is necessary in counties where polio is endemic in order to ensure eradication whereas the ipv can be used for individual protection in counties where polio has largely been eradicated. Ideally, ipv and opv would both be used in endemic counties, but given the cost involved, it's mostly just opv.

We are REALLY close to eradicating polio! It could happen in our lifetime.

We all take risks. Many, many, many women in the UK every year choose to risk the lives of their unborn, completely healthy babies by having an amniocentesis.

Quite correct - we do all take risks. I would hope that those being offered amniocentesis were advised of the risks and would make their decision based on those risks.

How many people are offered reliable information about vaccines? It appears from reading these threads that a number of people aren't informed so are not giving informed consent.

I really look forward to the day when Polio will be wiped from the face of the earth. We managed it with Smallpox, and Polio is now close to extinction. We know how to do it, and have the vaccines and techniques. It isn't even expensive.

I know two Polio survivors, they are both aged about 50/60, so they must have been caught in the last few outbreaks in Britain. Thank god it is practically unheard of now, here.

LaVolcan: How many people are offered reliable information about vaccines? do you have privileged information regarding these risks?

Do you accept the risk of miscarriage is 1:1600, or is this figure inflated (as we can only suppose the govt are working to reduce the financial burden of Down's children). Perhaps the real risk is only 1:10 000? Why question one source (vaccine risk) and not any others?

Can someone remind me please why in 1950's Britain the ministry of health (? Was that it's name?) suspended the DTP vaccination campaign in areas with polio outbreaks?

(It was sound advice)

I know that, here, we use the IPV. My example of the OPV was what happened in days gone by.
The WHO declared Europe a polio free zone about ten years ago. Not sure the vaccine can take credit for that as millions of people never had it.
BFG Why am I being selfish in not vaccinating my child?
Sorry to disappoint you, but I do drive my child about in a car. Yep, I do know the risks. We fly as well. Even more hazardous I believe. Life is, of course, not risk free. For me, vaccines are simply not a risk worth taking. Perhaps I'll change my mind next year. Driving a car is a risk worth taking. It has all sorts of benefits to me.

"My example of the OPV was what happened in days gone by."

But what was the point you wanted to make about OPV?

I think your perception of risk is very skewed tabitha. You may believe flying in a plane is more hazardous than a car, it's not - it's much much safer as shown in the statistics even if you dont feel that it is. Similarly with vaccines, statistics show that is far far safer than the disease.

do you have privileged information regarding these risks?

I certainly don't recall being given much information. I still have my son's vaccination record to hand and the only information given is the date and a signature. Things may have changed since then - I had a tetanus injection five years ago and the record shows the type of vaccine given. Now when I have my cat vaccinated, the record shows the vaccine type and batch number. Why should I have more information for my cat than myself? Does this count as privileged or not?

Fortunately I have never suffered a miscarriage and have therefore had no reason to look into the stats about it, so cannot offer an informed opinion about them.

I did have to make a decision about whether to vaccinate my children, and if so, which vaccines to give them. Therefore I chose to be informed about the issue. I am disturbed to read that immunity given by the rubella vaccination may wear off. I certainly don't ever recall being told this, or being told to advise my daughter to check her immunity status before she plans to conceive. It may be that they didn't know this at the time, but I can't recall any public health information being put out about it subsequently.

Piglet The OPV is a live vaccine and caused polio in some children. Did you not know that? It still causes polio cases abroad.

Agree with LaVolcan about the rubella jab. I'd assumed I'd be immune for life so had no reason to check my immunity before having a baby. I was never told the immunity might wear off.

tabitha: you make an individual cost/benefit sum. In the case of a vaccine with good uptake rates and thus low levels of disease, the sum will be in your favour if you don't vaccinate. Your DCs take no risk because not taking the vaccine and only face a low risk of catching the disease. Other people are vaccinating their children with some risk of vaccine damage with the side effect of benefiting you. This is selfish.

Beware however, as vaccination uptakes change (often after vaccination scares where perceived risk is high) and we see resurgences of disease. My neighbour didn't vaccinate as disease was apparently really low. Her now teenage DC caught measles 2 years ago. They had a stint in hospital so obviously quite serious.

So the cost/benefit sum can change. The selfish thing to do where vaccine coverage is low is to vaccinate of course. But as cote's game theory paper models, people hold on to the perceived risk IN SPITE of their increased risk of disease damage.

Here we go again.....diseases that are eradicated, or nearly so, have nothing to do with the associated vaccine programme. How many times have we heard that chestnut?

What caused it then? My neighbour insists it's improved hygiene. Well there you go - washing your hands after you pee is more effective than a vaccine. What's your favored theory tabitha?

BFG - I see you were still talking about amniocentesis rather than miscarriage per se. My reply is the same - it's not something which affected me, so it was not something I needed to look into to inform my decision.

(For what it's worth, for my second child I turned down scans because I didn't need a scan to tell me the date, and wouldn't have accepted a termination, if an 'anomaly' had been found, so I saw no point in them. For my first child, I didn't realise that they were 'offered' and that you could say no to them.)

Not something that affected you LaVolcan nor me, but you appreciate that this is a good parallel with vaccinations, don't you? There is a risk whether you do the amnio or not (like vaccinating or not). The medical profession and govt would benefit by deflating the risk of miscarrying to encourage women to test and terminate a Down's. The fact is, they don't. The risks when compared with vaccine damage are very high but with this information many, many women choose to take the amnio.

Not sure that "a Down's" is a polite way to describe a child, actually.

Still stinging from the selfish accusation?

I wasn't having a go. I was merely thinking that if my child were affected by Down syndrome, I don't think I'd want him described as "a Down's". That's all.

But no, if you think me selfish, that is fine by me. It's up to you.

BFG No, I don't accept that it's a good parallel with vaccinations; it seems tangental at best. There are strongly held opinions about whether to terminate for anomalies but a vaccination thread isn't the place to discuss that issue.