Also, he says that serious side effects do not happen often but already a momma posted about her poor DS, anyone else have a cautionary tale about a vaccine?
italics mine. Really? I thought almost everyone agreed serious reactions happen, some just think they are rarer than others.....
Unless there is an outbreak of some sort in your area, I see no harm in waiting with your preemies. You cannot undo a vax.
Taximom5 - How horrible! I am glad that he lived through all of that!
Right at the beginning we started researching vaccs when we were sorting out our birth plan for our first child.
We were considering questions like the vit k shot/drops etc and the vaccs came up as part of that.
At the time we were uncomfortable with sticking needles and foreign materials unneccesarily into a babe who had just been born, and we were coming up against so many other questions with regards to the vaccs and we were unsure of what to do.
So we decided to follow a delayed schedule starting at 2 years rather and use the time before then to research which ones we wanted to give or not.
2 years came and went and to date none of our children have been vaxed, our decision is not based on any one thing, rather so many things I wouldn't even know where to start.
Like Marnica, for our family we feel the risk of vaccs outweigh the benefits.
You also might want to read up on Glaxomithkline's fine for killing babies in Argentina during vaccine drug trials. Bottom line, these companies just want to make money - it doesn't seem to matter at what cost. Apparently, they feel children from third world countries are expendable...
It really bothers me that there has never been a study on vax. I know that they would have to study thousands of unvax kids to compare and they think that is abuse to with hold vax but why can't they just ask parents who already chose not to vax if they can compare their child to a vaxed child over 5 years? Seriously, it is okay to give something to MY child that is NOT tested and had unknown side effects? Gross.
I agree..the moms that I know who do not vax would be happy to be part of a study to compare to vaxed children. Again, I just have a very healthy dislike for pharma companies. They have too much money and too much influence.
Initially, I was vacillating between whether or not to vax when my 4 yo DS was born. He did end up getting the Hep B shot at birth (!) as I was not aware that they automatically did that at the military hospital. In addition, he did get HIB and Prevnar at this 2 month shot as I was still in the middle of researching and becoming comfortable overcoming the 'you must vaccinate' mantra that has been beaten into our minds. Thankfully, my son did not have any reactions (that I am aware of) though he does have eczema which I have to wonder if it might be a very minor reaction to the 3 shots he did receive.
I did read Dr. Sears' book which helped me to decide that I did not want to vaccinate my child. Just looking at the ingredients was enough to horrify me let alone reading the possible side effects. My 11 mo has not had any shots and has been very healthy - even with a brother around who gets plenty dirty and is in preschool.
Another book I found really helpful was "Raising a Vaccine Free Child" by Wendy Lydall. She has done an amazing amount of research and her book is fully referenced. She includes her experience as a mom and how she treated certain childhood illnesses in her family. She goes over all of the most common vaccine myths, how to care for 'normal' childhood diseases, etc. I find that I keep it always nearby to refer to for my own sake and when friends have had questions. She also discusses in detail the benefits of fever which I think a lot of parents are afraid of. I would highly recommend this book as well.
My son goes to a preschool on a military base and previous to that had gone to a private preschool. I have not had any trouble with either schools due to his vax status. I also find that I find it best to choose to not openly discuss his vax status unless it is necessary. My son has also participated in t-ball and soccer with no issues.
It can be a very scary journey but I think that is the nature of being a mom. :o)
Thanks, I just looked up "Raising a Vaccine Free Child" by Wendy Lydall. It looks like a great book! I will see if our library has it this week.
After doing the research so far I am in the no vax camp. We have a doctor appt. coming up next week, our doctor is pro-selective vax so I am planning on asking him which ones he feels are important and why then do more research on those. Right now I agree with you all, the risk outweighs the benefits!
My first child was fully vaccinated up to age 4, except for the chicken pox vaccine. She has a terrible autoimmune disease which has completely devastated our lives. It's called eosinophilic esophagitis. Most children with it can eat no food at all and have to live on elemental formula via G-tube, potentially for life. My daughter has a few foods she can eat but every bite is a battle against this disease. It causes extreme pain and an inability to sleep. My daughter has IgG allergies to almost all foods, over twenty of the most common foods. One of her worst allergies is to beef. DTaP has bovine serum in it. There is no doubt in my mind that vaccinating her made it worse. Every day that goes by without getting another vaccination, she has gotten better, but it has been hell. Her T-cell profiles show that her immune system is completely messed up. She is at high risk for developing a plethora of other autoimmune diseases. We are lucky that we can drag her out of failure to thrive. I cannot possibly overstate how horrendous dealing with this disease is and the impact it has on the entire family. It took us six and a half years to get a diagnosis. I have had to give up my education and career to take care of her and she is not well. My heart breaks for her over and over, every single day. I would give anything to turn the clock back and to undo the mistakes I made, blindly trusting the medical establishment.
My second child only had five vaccines total, but it was five too many. He has some variant of ASD. I have been fighting tooth and nail for his recovery since he was 15 months old. He is six now and doing very well -- his expressive and receptive language are pretty much normal, but he has permanent neurological damage which is probably autoimmune in origin, since he improves with immune suppression. He has hypotonia and weakness on the right side of his body. We are very, very lucky that he doesn't also have eosinophilic esophagitis, because it's increasingly common in kids with autism. He had severe sensory processing disorder which I have struggled hard to address. He is much, much better now but it has been a miracle that he has recovered.
As bad as these outcomes have been, they are nothing compared to getting the combination of eosinophilic esophagitis, autism and mitochondrial disease. This is the autoimmune trifecta and I know way too many mothers of children with all three now. Mitochondrial disease is fatal. One of my dear friends has a child who contracted mitochondrial disease within hours of being given Prevnar at 15 months. She has suffered thousands of seizures and multiple strokes. They had MRIs of her brain from before and after and the tissue necrosis as a result of the catastrophic reaction to Prevnar were well documented.
Neither of my children will ever receive another vaccine until adulthood.
Mitochondrial diseases are genetic. You are born with them. You don't get them from a vaccine.
It really bothers me that there has never been a study on vax. I know that they would have to study thousands of unvax kids to compare and they think that is abuse to with hold vax but why can't they just ask parents who already chose not to vax if they can compare their child to a vaxed child over 5 years? Seriously, it is okay to give something to MY child that is NOT tested and had unknown side effects? Gross.
Never been a study on vaccines? Really? Go to pubmed and type in MMR. that pulls up 2474 articles on that one vaccine alone.
Mitochondrial diseases are genetic. You are born with them. You don't get them from a vaccine.
The incidence of mitochondrial disease in America is increasing dramatically and there is no such thing as a genetic epidemic. It's yet another disease that was practically unknown thirty years ago that the incidence has grown dramatically. My daughter's illness also was virtually unknown before 2000.
Maybe if a child with a pretendency to mito was never exposed to the triggers, they would never develop the illness. There is mitochondrial disease and mitochondrial dysfunction. Both have epigentic components, environmental components. That's not to say that every child in America who is vaccinated will develop them -- obviously not -- but there's no way to tell until it's too late. Even my friend's pediatrician admitted that the thousands of seizures that started within two hours of Prevnar and the entire disastrous cascade was triggered by administration of Prevnar.
They did a sibling study of kids with mito that showed that their neurotypical siblings had potential underlying mitochondrial dysfunction and could develop autism at any time, if they were vaccinated.
The incidence of mitochondrial disease in America is increasing dramatically and there is no such thing as a genetic epidemic. It's yet another disease that was practically unknown thirty years ago that the incidence has grown dramatically. My daughter's illness also was virtually unknown before 2000.
Maybe if a child with a pretendency to mito was never exposed to the triggers, they would never develop the illness. There is mitochondrial disease and mitochondrial dysfunction. Both have epigentic components, environmental components. That's not to say that every child in America who is vaccinated will develop them -- obviously not -- but there's no way to tell until it's too late. Even my friend's pediatrician admitted that the thousands of seizures that started within two hours of Prevnar and the entire disastrous cascade was triggered by administration of Prevnar.
They did a sibling study of kids with mito that showed that their neurotypical siblings had potential underlying mitochondrial dysfunction and could develop autism at any time, if they were vaccinated.
It was unknown and undiagnosed 30 years ago because the technology to diagnose it did not exist then. It doesn't mean that it didn't exist.
Never been a study on vaccines? Really? Go to pubmed and type in MMR. that pulls up 2474 articles on that one vaccine alone.
Dr. Sears fully admits to there NEVER being a vaccine study group compared to a non vaccinated study group. The reason is it is considered unethical to with hold vaccines from children. I was stating that parents who chose not to vaccinate would willingly allow their child to be compared to a vaccinated child for the purpose of proving or disproving there are harmful side effects. This would be the only type of study worth reading. Studies performed and paid for by pharmaceutical companies do not count in my book.
It was unknown and undiagnosed 30 years ago because the technology to diagnose it did not exist then. It doesn't mean that it didn't exist.
Accepting that the diagnostic technology to identify the dysfunction of specific factors is new, the incidence of mitochondrial disease and dysfunction is rising dramatically. It is not simply better diagnosis. We're talking about catastrophic conditions that most pediatricians would never see one child with in a lifetime of practice. Most neurologists who have been in practice for decades have never seen one case. That is changing.
My daughter's illness, too, is one that was considered to be "extremely rare" in 2003. Now the projections are that it's five time more common than thought eight years ago. Kids who eat nothing, never sleep and lie on the floor screaming in pain are not easy to miss. Our GI at Children's Hospital, the head of the gastroenterology department admitted he knew nothing of how to treat this illness. The waiting room is filled with kids with devastating GI issues unknown twenty years ago. You can't imagine how bad it is until it's your kid. My daughter is lucky. She can actually attend school, she can eat some food. I know hundreds who are not so lucky.
Mitochondrial diseases are genetic. You are born with them. You don't get them from a vaccine.
Really? You say this with such authority, as though you were an expert on mitochondrial disease. Are you?
Have you read:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18626887
and
http://www.mcs-international.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=715
Really? You say this with such authority, as though you were an expert on mitochondrial disease. Are you?
Have you read:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18626887
and
http://www.mcs-international.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=715
Followed both links to the abstracts. Wish I could read the whole article.
As for mitochondrial diseases being genetic, not acquired:
Husband, who was a healthy, active, child, teenager, and adult, suddenly, and without warning, developed something that has been explained to us as a mitochondrial disorder which affects how his body uses long chain fatty acids. Thankfully for us there is a treatment. Without it, it destroys his muscles and causes severe pain. You think he would have noticed that growing up, if it had been there all along. We do not know what his trigger was.
My first child was fully vaccinated up to age 4, except for the chicken pox vaccine. She has a terrible autoimmune disease which has completely devastated our lives. It's called eosinophilic esophagitis. ...
...My heart breaks for her over and over, every single day. I would give anything to turn the clock back and to undo the mistakes I made, blindly trusting the medical establishment.
My heart hurts for you. :( But I applaud you for how hard you are working to heal both your children. You are a great mama. I too so wish I could turn back the clock and not have vaccinated my firstborn (who's mildly autistic and is fighting a variety of developmental battles right now.) I keep fighting for his recovery.
Hang in there. Hugs.
I'm reading "Sanctity of Human Blood", so far it's an interesting read...only solidifying my choice not to vax but we will see what the doctor says on Tuesday. He is super natural and open :) Thank you for all your responses, you have given me food for thought. I am so sorry to all of you that have a child who has suffered due to vaccinations, my heart goes out to you. Each of you sound like wonderful mommas 
I won't' repeat everything that these great moms have already said, but my decision took a similar journey. A great place to start is the CDC website, where you can access their "pink book" and research each disease and each vax one by one.
I would like to add a couple of things:
My son was exclusively formula fed from 8 weeks on. Many mamas have said that they would rethink their vax decision if they didn't BF, so I'd like to offer another side. I was concerned about this too, yet after all my research (which still continues!) I decided that the benefits of vaccines still did not outweigh the risks for my family. For me, not vaccinating is part of our lifestyle. My son eats a completely plant based, whole foods diet, carefully supplemented with probiotics, vitamin D, and non-invasive acupuncture and Chinese herbs. His little immune system has been just beautiful, he is an extremely healthy boy. He catches the occasional cold which his body deals with well, and he has developed one ear infection that responded beautifully to homeopathy. So I say this only because there might be a mom out there who like me, was unable to BF and thinks that they absolutely have to vaccinate because of this. Like I said, it is a lifestyle choice and takes careful consideration, but it works very well for my family!
Also, if Liqzierda is reading this....I'm so sorry that you have to go through this. How wonderful that you're here helping and educating people. I did notice that you mentioned your kids might be vaccinated as adults. I just want to let you know that I had a severe reaction to a handful of vaccines I was told were legally required to travel to the Dominican Republic. This was in my late 20's. I was extremely sick for 6 months and my immune system has never been the same. I know it sounds like I'm fear mongering, but I just wanted to let you know that reactions are possible in adults too :(
I just want to let you know that I had a severe reaction to a handful of vaccines I was told were legally required to travel to the Dominican Republic. This was in my late 20's. I was extremely sick for 6 months and my immune system has never been the same. I know it sounds like I'm fear mongering, but I just wanted to let you know that reactions are possible in adults too :(
That's EXACTLY what happened to me, except I was 25, and was told I needed the vaccines to travel to mainland China.
After the instant reaction (hot, red swelling the size of a grapefruit at 3 of the injection sites and fever), within a few weeks, I had the worst case of shingles the doctor had ever heard of (it lasted 6 weeks), my thyroid suddenly stopped working, I suddenly reacted to gluten, and I became suddenly allergic to every painkiller they gave me, including Tylenol.
The shingles is gone (after a solid year of post-herpetic neuralgia), and the painkiller allergies disappeared. Decades later, I still have autoimmune Hashimoto's, and I still can't eat gluten.
Vaccine reactions are definitely possible for adults. Indeed, I have read that there are US government-compensated cases of vaccine-induced lupus in adults, and French government-compensated cases of vaccine-induced MS. In both cases, I believe it was the Hepatitis B vaccine.
No more vaccines for me.
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