What We Do With Vaccines, and Why

I would list us under "moderate" in terms of our stance on vaccinations.

For the most part, in my opinion, most vaccines are harmless for most kids, and mostly protect most of us from most of the deadliest and most crippling diseases!

However . . . some vaccines are also deadly for some kids some of the time. Some of the ingredients in vaccines are "poisonous" to the body some of the time. Some vaccines are also unnecessary for some kids in some situations. In fact, some vaccines are unnecessary for most kids in most situations!

And some of the diseases we are mostly protected against? Are mostly harmless to most people most of the time. But, some of the diseases we are mostly protected against are really awful for most kids most of the time, too!

So, James and I make the following decision about vaccines: One at a time. We do not make broad statements like:

-Let's receive all vaccines blindly without researching.
-We will not receive any vaccines on principle.
-All vaccines are important and necessary.
-All vaccines are poisonous, harmful, and dangerous.

For what it's worth, we have done the following so far:

-Chosen not to get Hep B at Birth or One month. There is no reason why he would get this, and at such a young age, we had no reason to put those chemicals in his body without a real risk.

The reason Hep B is given to infants is if the Mom has it already, could have gotten it during her pregnancy because one of the parents is cheating, or if the infant needs a blood tranfusion, it can sneak through a screen 1 in 65,000 times.

However, if there is any risk that the infant could catch it, it is worth getting . . . 90% of infants who catch it during birth have it forever.


-At 2 months received Pneumoccal--Pc (common, deadly 20-30% of the time for infants) and Hib (Used to be common, deadly to 5%, disabling to 25%).

Both these diseases can lead to meningitis, one of the top killers of newborns. Furthermore, James' family has a history of weakness to meningitis. It was a priority for us to protect him against this. When he was 2 months old he was 12.5 lbs! We decided he was ready to handle the side effects and risks because the risks of not doing it were higher at that point.

Furthermore, both of these vaccines have been around for along time, and the amount of times it has led to serious complications in a small child is extremely rare.

-At 4 months received a combo shot of Dtap and Polio. There is evidence that a combo shot means that less ("poisonous") ingredients are needed with the vaccines.

DTap is protection against Diphtheria (rare, but deadly to 10%, but also treatable), Tetanus (rare, but deadly to 15%, and really severely awful to recover from), Pertussis (Whooping Cough, common, occasionally deadly--to 1% under 6 months).

We also received a 2nd dose of Hib.

-At 6 months we decided to receive nothing because James had not been feeling well (I forget if it was a cold or fever, teething related or not, but he had been sick the previous week). Commonly when reactions to vaccines occur, it is if the vaccine is given while the immune system is compromised, IE, when the child is sick or has recently been sick.

-But we rescheduled for 7 months, and then received a second dose of Pc and a third dose of Hib.

-We have chosen not to get Rotavirus . . . but now in researching to write this, LOL, I think I might reconsider . . .

Well, it is originally given at 2, 4, 6, months but it was totally un-necessary then (for us). While Rotavirus is a common disease that can lead to a somewhat serious risk of dehydration often needing a hospital stay to recover from . . . the risk of a baby who is not in daycare catching it is pretty low. And when James was that little I was barely even leaving the house, so there was no reason to get it then.

Plus, he was allergic to everything then and this is an oral vaccine, so he was at somewhat of a risk for developing a reaction because of that.

But now that his system is stronger, he's bigger, and we are being more social with other kids, he's at a SLIGHTLY higher risk of catching it. Though, then again, the odds of a tot who is still breastfeeding getting dehydrated and more seriously sick is fairly low . . .

I guess I'm still deciding! But this is a good example of what we try to consider when making each decision about each vaccine for each of our children at each visit.

Obviously there is a lot more to the full vaccine series but this is just what we've done so far. Who knows what we'll end up doing, we haven't really researched the rest yet, hehe. However, I will say without adding any more detail that we will put off the MMR for his 12 month visit, and probably just catch him up on one of the other ones instead.

A few more important things to add . . .

I believe it is a parent's right, for whatever reason, to decide that no vaccines are right for her/his child for some reason. But with this said. There is one more important point that I must add:

It is very important for most of the people to get vaccinated against some of the deadliest diseases, most of the time. Otherwise we face a situation where most of the people are somewhat at risk, and that isn't fair to anyone.

*We got most of our information from the Dr. Sears Vaccine Book. I would consider it to be a very fair and balanced book that presents all the information without telling you what to think or adding unnecessary fear-mongering. Unfortunately, it is one of few resources that I can say this about! I would highly recommend it.

Adoption Decisions

James and I talked the other night and came to a few decisions about our adoption process (subject to change at any time, obviously!):

-We are not ready to start planning this, even if it would take 5-6 years to adopt from China and that was our original country and timeline.

-Russia will probably be a better option than China.
+The adoptions are quicker, so we could realistically wait 4 more years before beginning this process and could still be bringing our child(ren) home in 6 years.
+There are less restrictions about family size, parental age, how young the other children are, etc.
+My sister-in-law is Russian so our child(ren) would have the opportunity to spend his/her summer there with his/her Aunt and cousin(s). It is important to me that our child(ren) be able to have a tie with his/her/their homeland. We were originally thinking China because we have a lot of Chinese friends and exposure to the Chinese Culture, but realistically, Russia is actually a better option and our child(ren) would be able to speak Russian at family gatherings with their Aunt and cousins? That's amazing!

-And our final decision: We might be more interested in a sibling set (2 biological siblings), one infant, one 2 or 3. We discussed how much it might mean to our children to have a biological sibling--instead of being one among us, he/she would have someone who has gone through what they have gone through, common interests, etc. In terms of the healing that needs to happen with adopted children (especially older ones)--we think having a biological sibling will be huge, especially in their adult lives. Plus you can usually get "discounts" (seems like a weird word for it but yeah), meaning that it might not cost too much more to adopt two children than it costs to adopt one.

So that's that! This means I can spend the next 3 years or so endlessly researching international/Russian adoption and be totally "in the know" when we do decide we are ready to begin this process. So this may be the last you'll hear about it for a long while, ;-)

Circumcision

Okay, I'm pretty sure I never wrote about this before. One decision people expecting a boy are faced with is whether or not to circumcise their son. This is a personal decision and honestly one that I don't feel SO strongly about for other people--I could care less what other people do because I really don't think it matters THAT much (in comparison to breastfeeding, for instance, in which I'm a pretty serious "lactavist" and feel pretty strongly that everyone at least should give a try with it because it is SO important).

But, though I could care less what other people decide to do, I decided quite a while ago that sons of ours would not be circumcised. When I brought this up years ago to James, to ask him what he thought, he said:

"Well, I don't know. Aren't kids supposed to look like their fathers?" (James is circumcised).
"Honey, I don't know how many baby penises you've seen, but they don't look like adult penises. Trust me. There is nothing you could do to make them look the same. Adult penises are huge and hairy. Baby penises are tiny and hairless. No child would ever look at their father's penis and think it was nearly the same anyway."
"Hmm, I don't know."
"Well here, let's watch this youtube video of a circumcision being performed to help you decide." (I tried to find an "unbiased" one to post here but didn't feel like spending that much time looking--feel free to shop around for your circumcision video of choice, though, or watch this one with the sound off so you can't hear the commentary (or the baby screaming in the background).)
Anyway, 20 seconds into the video James is like: "Turn it off, I agree, I agree, we won't do it, just turn it off!" (LOL)
"Okay Honey." I said, and we've been in pretty serious agreement about it ever since.

More specifically and personally, I feel like I've spent 9 months growing my son in my uterus. God/The Universe (call it what you will) spent 9 months building his body step by step, following a very specific blueprint. When he is born and put onto my chest and I look down at him, I know he will be the most beautiful and perfect person I have ever seen in my life. Every part of him will be perfect, and I don't feel the need to mess with what God made. Or put him through an unnecessary cosmetic procedure in his first day/week of life.

With this being said, sometimes there are good reasons. If it is part of your religion and you feel strongly about it--or if you feel strongly about it for some other reason . . . I heard one story of a women, and her husband was uncircumcised as a child but had some physical abnormality that made it painful for his foreskin to retract. So he ended up being circumcised as an adult, which was obviously a way bigger deal than as a baby. So if they had a son, they were planning on having him circumcised because they could make the assumption that their sons could have a similar issue. Okay, sounds like a good reason to me.

But personally, "looking like the father", or "because other people are", or something like that, I just don't buy it. You don't keep doing something unnecessarily just because it's been done before. I try to look at each of these parenting decisions outside of the context of "what other people are doing", because I'm not a freaking lemming.

With this being said, since the Academy of Pediatrics changed it's stance on circumcision about 30 years ago to reflect the fact that it is an unnecessary cosmetic procedure with no basis in medicine, the rate of uncircumcised boys has been steadily on the rise. In the U.S. now, about half the boys in our country are uncircumcised--obviously this varies greatly by region. But if you are expecting a son, there is no need to circumcise just because you think he will stand out if you don't. Who knows, where you live, he might stand out if he is.

So that's that. We'll all get to enjoy Little James' foreskin for many years to come. (Hmm, that sounds a little weird but you know what I mean, hehe).