Baby vaccinations - a friendly discussion!

[FTMaz]

Hi all
I have felt the need to put ‘friendly discussion’ in this post as I posted the same thing somewhere else and people said some really nasty things. To clarify I am not an anti vaxxer, I don’t believe in putting my child at risk but I am also interested to hear the opinions of others, especially those who may be better informed than myself.

for context my feelings around this have mainly come about since COVID. I had the vaccine and had an extreme reaction which resulted in me being very ill and advised not to get boosters etc. this is not me saying that the vaccine was a bad thing, just that I personally had a bad experience. Covid also made me very distrusting of those in power, especially given the plethora of things that have come out since.

so…what I am actually asking. My baby had his 8 week jabs a couple of weeks ago and is due his 12 weeks. Since having the jabs I have gone down a rabbit hole of research and it’s making me feel very anxious that I am not making an informed decision but one that is just forced upon us because of guilt and societal pressure. I had both the flu and whooping cough vaccines when I was pregnant for the sake of my baby as I said I would never have another vaccine after what happened with the Covid one so I am not someone who is just trying to avoid them. Does anyone else have similar thoughts? I’m keen to hear from medical professionals who have an informed opinion rather than selling the party line.

again if you are going to reply please do so only with good intention, I don’t need to be told that I’m an awful, irresponsible parent just for wanting to ensure I am fully informed.

thank you!

Although I'm a healthcare professional, there's little research-wise I feel I can add to the conversation. My 3 children are fully vaccinated. Not scientific at all, but Roald Dahl's 1986 letter may be useful. He was extremely interested in medicine (he invented a medical device for encephalitis and I believe he really started "the stroke association" charity). I'll leave his poignant letter here. I understand this is about measles vaccination only, but I truly believe vaccination is a miracle of the modern world.

Measles: A Dangerous Illness

Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it.

Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything.

“Are you feeling all right?” I asked her.

“I feel all sleepy,” she said.

In an hour, she was unconscious. In 12 hours she was dead.

The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her.

That was 24 years ago in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles happens to develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her.

On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immunised against measles.

I was unable to do that for Olivia in 1962 because in those days a reliable measles vaccine had not been discovered. Today a good and safe vaccine is available to every family and all you have to do is to ask your doctor to administer it.

It is not yet generally accepted that measles can be a dangerous illness. Believe me, it is. In my opinion parents who now refuse to have their children immunised are putting the lives of those children at risk.

In America, where measles immunisation is compulsory, measles like smallpox, has been virtually wiped out.

Here in Britain, because so many parents refuse, either out of obstinacy or ignorance or fear, to allow their children to be immunised, we still have a hundred thousand cases of measles every year.

Out of those, more than 10,000 will suffer side effects of one kind or another. At least 10,000 will develop ear or chest infections. About 20 will die.

I'm sorry you had that experience with your midwife. Health professionals are only human, and can be susceptible to the same scaremongering anti-vax material as anyone else.

Health professionals can be held to account for giving patients advice that is contrary to evidence and potentially dangerous. So in the same way the GMC would become very interested if I started trying to convince my diabetes patients to ditch their insulin and try homeopathy instead, or encouraging my COPD patients to take up smoking, we could also be pulled up by our regulatory body to justify why we are putting children at risk by persuading their parents to deprive them of potentially life-saving vaccines. It's not a Big Brother style conspiracy, we just have a responsibility to Do No Harm. As health professionals are only human and can hold harmful/dangerous personal health beliefs which are contrary to scientific evidence, there needs to be policies in place to stop those health beliefs being disseminated to vulnerable patients who may take their profession as an endorsement of those beliefs.

@pbdr Great post!

I do understand where you are coming from
OP. Anti-vaxxers can be hugely convincing and make you feel like you are being wilfully blind to a blatantly obvious conspiracy. If you’re feeling at odds with scientific fact and struggling to put trust in governing bodies, ask yourself what the over-stretched NHS have to gain from rolling out vaccines at massive cost VS what social outcasts have to gain from creating mistrust and positioning themselves as an oracle.

With respect, your midwife is not a scientist. It can be confronting when you’re faced with such opinions IRL but just because she works for the NHS shouldn’t add any more weight to her argument than joe bloggs online, they are both susceptible to misinformation. IMO it is a very privileged and ignorant take to refuse vaccinations/modern medicine. Anti-vaxxers have the advantage of herd immunity, but what if we all listened to their scaremongering and refused vaccines? We would be plunged into the deep dark depths of polio, measles etc. and I’m sure the anti-vaxx brigade would be right along with a new conspiracy that put them back on their soap box.

OP, I had a mw who was excellent - but who put the fear of God into me about the anti D injection (I’m rhesus negative) because of the risk of contaminated blood being in it. When I started bleeding after a sweep a Dr explained very firmly to me that the risk was tiny and that I needed it if I wanted to have more DC in the future as she couldn’t tell where the bleeding was coming from. I then realised that writing ‘no antiD without a bloodtest’ in my birth plan was pretty stupid and I had it. So an otherwise great mw was not who I should have been listening to on that point.

What my aunt reminded me when I was approaching my first baby jabs was that babies died of measles in the past. Other diseases were almost as bad - and that the vaccination programme had saved many lives. To me, that is what it comes down to.

The baby vaccines are tried and tested. The Covid jab was obviously new - although I still had all my doses. Personally I’d rather have a reaction to the jab than risk getting the full impact of the virus. When I got Covid I was scarcely ill. Unvaccinated DS was quite poorly. He got Covid the week he was scheduled to have his first vaccine dose.

I think COVID-19 has given everyone some kind of weariness about medical treatment and vaccinations.

However, vaccinations for young children have been around for a very long time. A common misconception with vaccinations is that they are designed to stop children from getting certain illnesses but they are simply designed to help the body respond better. should your baby become ill!

You can take the research to your health visitor or your GP and have an open discussion with them about it prior to your baby having further vaccinations as I'm sure any reputable practitioner would be willing to listen to your thoughts and feelings and provide you with support around your decision !

My first 2 children are fully vaccinated.

My 7 month old isn't - and won't be having any.

Resources...

Dissolving illusions - Suzanna humphries

Millers reviews of critical vaccine studies

Healing our children - sally fallon

Also, i left my marketing role and moved to pharma 2 years ago, and seeing the sales side of things opened my eyes.

Husband now works in a firm whose main client is NHS - vaccine injury reports are constant - big pharma hold zero liability on vaccines.

My eldest son was harmed at birth through medical negligence and since then I've become obsessive about forming my own opinions and doing my own research.

The vaccines currently in use for babies have been in use for a long time and are extremely safe with years of research behind them, they are not comparable to the Covid vaccinations. That being said the vaccine schedule is the easier most cost effective and efficient way of vaccinating children at a population level but not necessarily the best for them on an individual level. My first was fine but my second was very unwell after his first set at eight weeks, you can pay to have the vaccines individually or you can have the six in one and then wait four weeks before having the Men B, this was much better for our little one and he was not unwell after having them done like this so this is an option

People who don't let their children get vaccinated are morons.

My dad's cousin was severely disabled after she caught whooping cough from her older brother.

Sorry - that wasn't very friendly

I have a few dr friends. All their children are vaccinated.

ZOMBIE THREAD!

Nearly a year old. OP has made her mind up by now

I must be ancient but most of the people I find urging against vaccination are to young to remember the effects of these diseases. I'm too young for some of them but had measles when I was four. It has fucked up my eyesight. I've had operations but I've never seen properly since and never will. I wouldn't have dreamed of leaving my children open to the same so they are vaccinated.

Two doors down from us and around the same time, twin boys caught mumps and became infertile.

These were very common, very standard experiences before vaccination became normal practice.

Bad outcomes from vaccines are still far, far rarer than bad outcomes from the diseases themselves.

Vaccine reactions are a thing, but (and it is difficult) they should be kept in proportion. They are rare.

People have allergies and when millions and millions, of people take the same medication, or vaccination, theres bound to be at least a small number who have reactions.

My MIL's sister died as a child from an allergic reaction to paracetamol. I'm allergic to penicillin.

Two drugs used daily by many many millions of people, mostly without a single thought. Vaccines are the same - used daily by so many people. Understandable that you'd never have another Covid vaccine after your reaction, but the main reason people don't suffer life my Gr-Gr Grandmother did in losing 10 of her 14 children to measles is because for the very vast majority of people vaccines work and vaccines are not something that cause them issues.

Hi everyone
yea not sure why this has popped up again. Thanks for the replies though I appreciate the range of opinions and perspectives.

I did get my child vaccinated and he’s just had his 1 year vaccines. I’m not sure if I already said this but given how politics has been over the last few years I have a general distrust of those in power and feel we need to be asking more questions about things that are advised or ‘normal’.

my DH was very pro vaccine and seeing as my son is obviously also his it made the decision easier for me to- albeit a little bit of a cowards way out of a hard choice!