Non-vaxers! How "crunchy" was your upbringing?

[CCChanel]

Just curious. :

IMPORTANT: For NON vaxers only please! No selective or delayed vaxers.

...sorry about the misspelling of "severely"... lol.

[xmasbaby7]

not crunchy at all!

We wouldn't be considered crunchy by many here, but we just really believe in a more holistic approach to health and nutrition and parenting.

[rmzbm]

VERY actually! My Grandparents raised me, my Gram BF'd her 3 kids until they were nearly 10, not sure EXACTLY how old, but WELL into elem. school. She even let me nurse, lol...I coslept until I was 12...they are anti circ, but sadly never said a word till I circed my DS's My Gram is the MOST outspoken against CIO woman I have EVER met. She also CD's all her kids & me!

[CCChanel]

This is for entertainment purposes only!

But...I'd like to know if you are a non-vaxer and grew up "mainstream"... what got you interested in AP issues... esp non-vaxing.

[NYCVeg]

Not at all. My parents were somewhat AP, in the sense that they didn't spank or use punitive discipline (at least not by the time I was born--things were a bit different for my older siblings). But we ate lots of processed food--hot dogs, Kraft cheese singles, Froot Loops, Pop Tarts, you name it. We were all vaxed on schedule. My parents are the king and queen of disposable everything--they use paper towels, paper plates, etc. as much as possible. I was 100% formula-fed, as were all my siblings, and my parents used disposable diapers with all of us. Regular chemical cleaners in the home (409, Windex, etc.). My dad is a doctor.

As for what got us interested in not vaxing...when we started trying to get pregnant with dd, I started researching birth and found that, when I stopped listening to all the myths and steretypes, the evidence suggested that, for a healthy pregnancy, a natural, out-of-hospital birth would be safe and far more enjoyable than a medicalized, hospital birth. So I researched natural birth, breastfeeding, circumcision...and eventually got to vaccines. Once you start challenging the conventional wisdom on some things, it leads you to question other things. We did a ton of research on vaxing, and feel very comfortable with our decision. I do think there's a place for allopathic medicine, but I also feel very strongly that, as a culture, we neglect the central role of things like nutrition, exercise, exposure to chemicals, etc. in our well-being. We prefer to get shots and pop pills, rather than actually investing in our health.

[13Sandals]

yeah - I don't know how I happened! my mom believed doctors were gods...I started out fairly mainstream with DS#1 though - I've gotten waaaay crunchier in the past decade...

[1babysmom]

Not at all...FF from about 4 months on, fully vaxed, definitely didn't co-sleep (although we were allowed to jump in bed with them if we had bad dreams or something), etc.

Umm...I don't remember exactly what made me second-guess vaccines. I was VERY pro-vax while in nursing school and I do remember someone (I think it was my BIL) mentioning they were delaying vaccines for their daughter, but even then I didn't start really thinking or caring about it for a year or so afterwards.

[ktbug]

My mom bf'd me to 6 mos (I was born at the height of Formula Is Best), though not my little brother, he was FTT and special needs; she got bad advice from docs about that. We were fully vaxed on the schedule they had back then. We didn't CIO, she would come get us and rock us back to sleep and stuff, but we didn't regularly co-sleep. They let me in their bed when I had trouble sleeping as a grade schooler, but as a baby I was in a crib in my own room, as was my brother. We ate grocery store food and jarred baby food, we had strollers and plastic toys, and we were occasionally spanked when we did something particularly terrible.

So, not very AP. They were good parents, nonetheless.

[LianneM]

We were breastfed, cloth diapered, and worn in a snugli. My mom did try to make healthier food but we still ate a lot of SAD. They spanked occasionally and we were vaxed on schedule. My mom is an RN also.

[wonderwahine]

there were a few ap things, i slept in the bed as a child sometimes, my dad wore me when i was a baby, but i had terrible reflux. my mum tryed to breastfeed but i had to go on a medical formula. I wore cloth diapers.

[Dragonfly]

My mom was very AP (I never realized how much so until seeing her interact with my son, which made me remember more about my own childhood ). I don't know that I'd say she was crunchy, though. We always ate healthy food compared to what other people were eating, but she wasn't the granola type.

[mama_b]

I was raised very mainstream. I started to question vaxes in highschool when I worked for a family member who sold natural supplements for a living. He was very into natural health and there was always interesting stuff laying around to read. That's what started my whole "non-mainstream" way of living.

[mothragirl]

i wasn't raised in a super crunchy house, but i grew up in humboldt county, ca so i was around NFL all the time.

[rachelmarie]

I was raised by very mainstream parents. I was bf'd for a year, though (yay, mom! ). I was made to CIO as a baby. I very, very rarely was spanked. I was vaxed on schedule and the food we ate was okay, but not great. At least my mom cooked all our meals even if our veggies were usually canned . They were, and still are, great parents! They did the best they could with what they knew at the time.

Since college I'd been interested in natural health. Dh and I started eating all organic and natural foods a couple years before ds was born. Our interest in living naturally brought us to choosing to CD. In researching that I found out about babywearing and bought a sling. After ds was born and he was constantly nursing and napping on me I spent a lot of time online and found MDC, where I found this forum and started researching the vax issue. I passed along info to dh and we are both solidly anti-vax now.

And, seriously. We just keep getting crunchier all the time! It's kind of addictive.

[thefragile7393]

As regards AP...nada except for extended breastfeeding. Everything else was mainstream. As regards a crunchy lifestyle, it was mild-moderate. I was in cloth diapers because disposables, all of them, made my butt break out. My mom hooked me on vitamins from the time I could safely swallow them, always used stuff from the health food store if I was ever sick...which was really really rare. We ate fairly healthy but we also ate a ton of mac and cheese from the 99 cent bin...along with hotdogs. I almost never needed to see a doctor.

It's odd, while my mom knew a lot about herbs and herbal healing and natural therapies, she also had this odd God complex about docs and that were to be followed and never crossed.

[Katerz2u]

Not AP or NFL at all. I am AP/NFL by "mother's intuition".

[tropicaldutchtulip]

I was raised very mainstream! : And I started thinking about/researching delaying and spreading out vaxes a few years ago on my own. Once I had my girls though then I decided to not vax at all.

[Proverbs31]

Other. I guess we were sort of mainstream, but my father was dead-set against vaxing because he believed that vaccines contained the "mark of the beast" :

[Spy]

I didn't even know vaccination and AP issues were related

[Arduinna]

Basically mainstream although my mom did BF and use CD and I was sorta selectively vaxed. I never got the smallpox vax for instance.