I know that this is a touchy subject for some Moms.
For obvious reasons, the subject of vaccinations has been on my mind a lot for the last while.
I recently read a blog post about a woman who had decided against vaccinating her youngest child. She has 2 kids. Her child 1 had all his shots and was a sickly baby/toddler – think hospitalisations, grommets, regular colds and gastro etc. Her child1 has Aspergers and as I understand it, has also been diagnosed with severe ADHD.
Her child 2 was born sick (he had cancer at birth), is now better and has not been vaccinated yet because of immunity issues relating to the fact that he was born with cancer. As I understand it, she was advised to wait until her Child2 turned a year old before vaccinating. Despite the fact that her Child2 was born sick, he has been SUPER healthy since he got better which wasn’t too long after he was born. Am I making any sense?
She has weighed up various options and has thus decided that she is not going to vaccinate her Child 2. I am not judging her decision at all. In fact, whether or not I agree with her decision is not the issue here. It is HER DECISION (the blogger in question is definitely not a stupid woman and I know that she would have given this subject extensive thought) and I respect it. In a way I can understand how she came to that decision.
Whether or not we want to admit it, vaccinations have been the source of controversy for quite some time now, mainly because of more and more children being diagnosed with Autism and also due to a host of other factors.
Both my kids are vaccinated. It was simply something that I never even questioned. Child 2 had many of his vaccines quite late because he was sick and on antibiotics every 2nd week or so. We only really got up to date when he just turned 2.5.
I have been wondering a lot about my kids and where their issues stem from. It would seem that they have been genetically predisposed to ADHD and everything else on that spectrum. In case you are wondering, Autism, ADD/ADHD, Aspergers, Tourettes, OCD, ODD etc are all on that spectrum.
I know that I can (mostly) control what they eat and help them manage their issues as holistically as I can to the best of my ability.
I suppose I could have decided NOT to vaccinate but then I would have had problems further down the line. I don’t know of ANY school in Cape Town that would accept a kid without an up-to-date vaccination certificate.
Am not really sure why I’m blogging this. Quite frankly, it’s no use crying over spilt milk and all. There is no scientific proof that my kids issues are related to vaccines. There is also no scientific proof that my kids issues are NOT related to vaccines.
I do wish though that I had done some more homework on vaccinations. I wish I had asked more questions.
I wish that I had asked things like what it actually means to vaccinate, what are the possible implications of vaccinations, WHY we need to vaccinate, why it would possibly be better to NOT vaccinate etc.
If you had asked me a few years ago WHY I was doing it, I would not have had a good reason, simply because it was something that I did without question. I would have answered and said something like “because I must” or whatever.
Have you ever really thought about vaccinations? WHY you are doing it? Possible implications further down the line?
How do you feel about parents who choose not to vaccinate for whatever reason?
Do I have ANY readers who don’t vaccinate? Why? No judgies from me. I’m just very curious about how and why you came to that decision.
