We are officially in round two and three of the chicken pox virus with our kids. Jocelyn was the first one to come down and Katelyn followed suit two weeks later. Easton started showing the day after Katelyn. When people find out that our kids have the chicken pox, the common question is...don't they have vaccinations to prevent that and some ask why we didn't vaccinate. This is a hot button for a lot of people. About half of our friends vaccinate and half don't. Since there is no state law that requires a parent to vaccinate their kids, it is nice that the decision is left up to the parents to make the best medical choice for their kids. Many strongly disagree with the decisions we have made for our own kids and that is fine...I am not the type of person to go up to someone and condemn them for vaccinating their child...if someone wants to talk about why we don't I am always open to the conversation and sharing our personal reasons. Some say they don't for religious reasons, however that is not our reasons at all.
When I was growing up and going through my own round of vaccinations I had a severe reaction to the DPT shot. I was not able to complete the entire series and now have a lovely little dent in my leg as a result. As I got older and there more shots that the schools recommended, we tried doing the shot thing again. I remember at times becoming extremely sick before getting home from the Dr’s office. I consider myself one of the lucky ones. The reactions that I suffered personally where only a partial factor in our decision not to vaccinate...the tip of the iceberg came when I worked for a group home for people with disabilities in Lincoln. I would talk with the parents of my clients and find out that some at one point had normal healthy babies and after getting vaccinated their child changed overnight or within a few days and was not that normal child anymore.
I know many Dr’s and health groups out there completely deny that there are links between vaccinations and things going wrong, but how can they admit it? Imagine how many people would sue because of what vaccinations did to their child. It is a risk that we are taking, but we feel that the odds of our kids getting something that the vaccinations are trying to prevent is much less than the reactions from the vaccinations…not including the chicken pox….we knew those were coming. We don’t feel that no noe should get vaccinated as it would be horrible if an epidemic broke out again of all the “childhood illnesses” from long ago…it would just be nice if there was a 100% guarantee that nothing would go wrong after getting vaccinations. At least there is a National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program to help families out when their child does suffer certain problems from the vaccinations…but money can not always cure a child.
The demographics of this country are changing, so maybe a little later down the road when our children are a little older and have better immune systems to handle vaccinations we might reconsider…but for right now we feel we have made the best choice for our kids.
References: O.K. I know that you shouldn’t believe everything you read, but I found the following websites interesting… http://www.relfe.com/vaccine.html
There are quiet a few sites out there for or against vaccinations...this is just one of the one's against.
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