International Travel - Which vaxes?

[Kim B Lynn]

Hey Folks!

My DS will be two this month, and we've not vaccinated him at all so far. However, we will be traveling to Montreal Canada, and feel like we should at least get some basics down since we'll be spending time in international airports. My question is this:

Which vaccines should I make sure to get, and which are less than necessary?

If it'll help you in your advice, our feelings on vaccines are that if stay at home and don't do daycare or anything too "crowded" that the risk level is so low that I don't want to worry about it until my kiddos are older. I would like them to get some of them before/around adolescence since I think a few of the diseases are significantly more dangerous past childhood. And of course, I'd rather be safe than sorry when it comes to traveling to different places with different microbial profiles, especially if we'll be around tons of people.

Thanks!

[Kim B Lynn]

Also, is there a certain brand/formula that I should ask for that is less harsh/toxic than the regular ones?

[nia82]

It's hard to say, you could look up which diseases are currently going around in your target area. That being said, I traveled twice internationally (Germany) and three times nationally (SFO, Detroit) with DS when not vaccinated. I stayed away from people, we took Lysol wipes along to clean our seats and practiced exaggerated hygiene (aka manic hand washing) and took some extra vitamins (D,C, and cod liver oil from nordic naturals). DS didn't get sick. Europe has regular "outbreaks" of measles but I checked whether my county was affected at the time of travel (if it had been I might have considered getting the measles only shot there).

As for brands, for DTaP I prefer Daptacel and for HiB ActHib. We only do those and down the road measles (in Europe), you cannot break up MMR in the USA, no monovalent vaccines are available and as far as I know only Merck makes it (MMR II is the brandname I think).

[Kim B Lynn]

Also, my son has a peanut allergy. I've been browsing the net trying to figure out what I should and shouldn't get and I read something about vaccines and allergies....can anyone elaborate for me?

I'm feeling really under-prepared for this, but the trip came up on us quite suddenly as a bonus from my DH's work....I always figured I'd study up on vaccines "later" and now I have no idea what I need to know.

[springmum]

We didn't vax when we went to a Caribbean country for vacation. At airports we hung out away from the crowds, washed hands a lot, washed the plane seat/tray table, and took our vitamin's and healthy snacks. 

I will mention that Quebec (the province where Montreal is for the those out of the country) had been experiencing a  measles outbreak this summer http://www.healthunit.com/article.aspx?ID=17062  in certain areas. 

I don't know about the allergy info though, hopefully you can find the ingredient list somewhere.

[Kim B Lynn]

Thanks for that link. We decided to do the MMR since measles has been making the rounds in Quebec and Europe and since it'll be a busy airport w/ potentially lots of foreigners. Also DH found a website that said something about Mumps up in Canada although I think it was a different province. Still, I feel at peace with my decision. More than I expected to, for which I am grateful.