I’m not entirely comfortable on this side of the fence…
January 5, 2010Zach and I chose not to allow our children to receive the H1N1 vaccination this year. This decision was not made lightly. It involved lots and lots of discussion and even more research from both Zach and me. Normally we are both very much in favor of vaccinations. We agree with almost every vaccination offered to our children – measles, chicken pox, rotavirus, etc. However, we have decided that we’re not ready for H1N1. All of these other vaccinations have been through strenuous testing regimens. They were not rolled out in a speedy timeline and thrust upon the public in such a forceful manner. Millions of other people have already had these other vaccinations and side effects are well established. I’m not interested in using my children as one of the millions of potential “test subjects” for the H1N1 vaccine. I have yet to hear a logical explanation as to why H1N1 can not be rolled into the standard seasonal flu vaccination as so many other strains are. I’m not comfortable with the “get out of jail free card” issued to pharmaceutical companies producing the vaccination so that if anything does happen to go wrong, they are not legally liable. If H1N1 is a milder form of the flu, why the push to get vaccinated? Why is it every media report I hear about someone “dying from H1N1″ really turns out to be someone who had other medical complications and a strain of the flu just happened to be the straw that broke the camel’s back? The list goes on.
At any rate, this is a new and strange position for me. I’m not accustomed to being “that parent” – the one who refuses a vaccine. I acknowledge that this means my children might contract a mild strain of flu. I worry that this makes me an irresponsible community member because my child might infect another person. As a parent who is generally in favor of vaccines, it feels weird to be on the other side of the fence this time. It’s weird to say to our pediatricians, “yes, I understand, but no thank you, please do not give my child that shot.” We’re usually on the same page with our pediatricians, and generally follow most of their advice, but this time, we aren’t…
We’re on the other side of the fence in regards to H1N1 and it feels a little weird over here. How about you – did you and/or your children receive the H1N1 vaccine? Have you received any negative feedback for your decision?
I finally let your Dad eat Thai food (during our pregnancy, I wouldn’t let anyone even have it in the same room with me – even the sight of the restaurant was enough to make me feel nauseous).
A few weeks ago I took Parker in for his 9 month checkup. While he has always been a pound or two smaller than his brother, we had never really worried about his size. Zach is long and lanky, and Parker seemed to have a similar body type. At the 6 month checkup, Parker was in the 36th percentile for weight (65th for height). His weight seemed to be doing a step sort of thing and not really staying on one curve, but there weren’t many plot points to really say that definitively. He seemed to gain quickly, and then level off and then gain quickly again. At 6 months he had leveled off a little, so I expected a bigger gain at his 9 month visit. Instead, he dropped off his curve. He dropped from 36th percentile to 18th! The nurse practitioner suggested that it was probably Parker’s increased activity. He went from being mostly stationary at 6 months to constant motion at 9 months. I hope that she’s right, but there is a little worried mommy part of my brain that can’t stop saying “what if it’s something more?” At this point, we’re just waiting to see how he gains in the next three months. So, we’ve been a little more focused on Parker’s eating habits lately. He’s always seemed to eat fine – 3 meals a day and bottles in between. Finger foods throughout the day as well. So I’ve been trying to convince him to eat a full jar of food (stage 3) at each meal and introducing more table foods than we had been before. Unfortunately, it appears that Parker has recently decided that he is no longer interested in baby food. He’ll eat about 2 bites and then he stops swallowing and letting the food slide out of his mouth. So now we’re trying to come up with foods that don’t come in baby jars but is still chewable and edible for our little guy. And most importantly, making sure that he’s eating nutritious food that helps him grow lots over the next three months!