Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Trusting Tuesday: Immunizations


This post isn't about if you should or shouldn't vaccinate your baby.

This post is to encourage you to become educated about vaccines so that you can trust your own decision to vaccinate or not vaccinate your children.

There are many vaccines available for ourselves and our children. These vaccines have been developed to help prevent the spread of some potentially very scary diseases. Every parent has a choice to vaccinate their children or not, but the majority of school systems require children to be vaccinated or sign a waiver in order to attend school. Obviously if you child doesn't go to a public school where vaccines are required, then you have the option to home school your children if they aren't vaccinated.
Here is a list of current vaccines: and the signs and symptoms of the diseases
Chickenpox: Rash, tiredness, headache, fever
Diptheria: sore throat, mild fever, weakness, swollen glands in neck
Hib: may be no symptoms unless bacteria enter the blood
Hep A: fever, stomach pain, loss of appetite, fatigue, vomiting, jaundice, dark urine
Hep B: fever, headache, weakness, vomiting, jaundice, joint pain
Flu: fever, muscle pain, sore throat, cough, fatigue
Measles: Rash, fever, cough, runny nose, pink eye
Mumps: Swollen glands, fever, headache, tiredness, muscle pain
Pertussis: Severe cough, runny nose, fever
Polio: Sore throat, fever, nausea, headache, or no symptoms
Pneumococcal: pneumonia
Rotavirus: diarrhea, fever, vomiting
Rubella: rash, fever, and swollen lymph nodes
Tetanus: stiffness in neck and abdominal muscles, difficulty swallowing, muscle spasms, fever


Resource for this post were from the CDC website. Found HERE

IF any of these diseases end up with a complication they can lead to things like liver failure, paralysis, meningitis, broken bones, swelling of the brain or heart, and even death.

How often does this happen? I don't know. I do know it is rare, I do know that a lot of people don't get these diseases anymore because of vaccines... but what harm comes from the vaccines themselves? I have no idea. Does every child tolerate vaccines the same way?

Nope- they don't- Do I have scientific proof? Nope. But my first daughter took every vaccine like a champ and the second one I had to change her vaccine schedule because she got so sick every time she had vaccines.

Interested in alternative vaccine schedules? Stay tuned for next week's post.

1 comment:

Heather said...

i appreciate the objective viewpoint. i personally favor vaccines. but i've never had a child negatively react to them so... anyways, i just wanted to say that i really liked the way you presented it. :)