Addie had her four month round of vaccines yesterday. She was such a trooper, just smiling and shrieking for our pediatrician. When it came time for the two shots in her thigh, her face turned bright red and she started screaming. Fortunately, it only lasted a minute this time. By the time I sat her down to nurse her, she had already stopped crying! I fed her for maybe five minutes and she was all smiles. All afternoon and into the night I kept waiting for her to go ballistic but she was so happy! Then... 8:20 at night came. Her Tylenol had just about worn off, but it wasn't time for an additional dose and she went crazy. She was screaming so hard; I had never heard screams like this. I have no idea how mamas are able to watch and listen to their baby scream like Addie did, but every day. My heart goes out to all of you. It's heartbreaking seeing your child in pain and knowing you can't make it go away.
On the topic of vaccines... of all of the research I did before Addie was born, vaccines were just something I felt were right and so I did zero, zip, zilch research on them. Looking back, I feel like that was so ignorant, and I wished I would have read up on at least SOMETHING regarding them. If you chose to not vaccinate your children, or chose to do a delayed schedule, may I ask why?
I am definitely an attachment parent type, and this has been bugging me for the past few days. I am feeling so much guilt about Addie's shots because I feel like I'm the one that caused her to go through that pain. I knew it was going to happen, I'm the one who took her to the doctor and held her down as the shot pierced her thigh. If normally, I'm so protective and try so hard to make sure she's safe and pain-free, why would I allow myself to let her experience pain? OR... am I just WAY over thinking it?
I try to do a lot of common sense parenting. And so the way we choose to vaccinate is no different. We choose vaccinations that help to prevent serious illness for us or someone else. So we do not do flu (getting the flu shot doesn't prevent the flu just lessens symptoms that are very rarely life threatening) or the chickpox vaccine (because it also doesn't prevent pox just lessens the symptoms), we delay ones that are not life applicable (for example my newborn is not having sex or in direct fluid exchange with anyone who has hep-b so we will wait) and the rest of the vaccines we administer 1 or 2 at a time depending on what is in them (we try to avoid giving too many that are high in aluminum at the same time or ones that have lots of side effects together). I believe that most vaccines are good, but in the same way that you don't take tylenol, motrin, vicodin, and morphine together I don't think you should give your child too many chemicals at once. They may not be too powerful on their own but you just never know how those vaccines are going to work together in that tiny body. Make sense? Some of that is based on fact and some of that is based on my opinion. :)
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ReplyDelete1. You are not overthinking. Always trust your instincts, you know what is best for your family.
2. It's not too late to change your vaccination schedule. Just because she got one or two rounds of a vaccine doesn't mean she needs to finish the series and/or you can just start breaking up the shots now.
I agree with what Liza said! We do all vaccinations, though, and we seperate the shots if he's supposed to get more than two at a time. I go back about a month later to get the ones we didn't get. Do whatever you feel is right. Its hard seeing them cry but you have to remember that you're protecting her by doing it.
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