Hep B Info for me and DS

[CanidFL]

I haven’t posted a question here in a long time because I thought I was done my research and made up my mind.

Well….DH brings up the HepB vax yesterday. He said he is thinking of getting this one for DS at 2. I asked why and he said he read that HepB can live outside the body for 7 days. I said it was transmitted through blood and that does not make any sense. I told him how rare it was for a child to catch it and that most people who get it recover with life time immunity. Not sure why he is stuck on this one.

I have also been wondering about this for me as well since I will start attending births in the next couple years. I had the HepB series when I was 12. Are you supposed to get a booster and how long is the shot supposed to last for?

I didn’t do much research on HepB because I thought we would revisit it once DS was a teenager or preteen.

Any reliable sources would be great.

Thanks

[Gitti]

There are a lot of links in this post -

http://www.mothering.com/discussions...4&postcount=20

Can you post a source for what your dh said? I really doubt it.

I don't mean I doubt that you can give a source, I doubt that he read it correctly.

[swissmom]

To start your research, read everything about HepB on Inside Vaccines:

http://insidevaccines.com/wordpress/...k/hepatitis-a/

They present only facts based on numbers and provide sources for every statement (so you know where to continue reading afterwards).

[ckumelos]

directly from the CDC

Transmission: Contact with infectious blood, semen, and other body fluids from having sex with an infected person, sharing contaminated needles to inject drugs, or from an infected mother to her newborn.

And the CDC's not going to make it sound less difficult to catch since they are the biggest promoters of vaccines.

[CanidFL]

Thanks. I went back and read the whole pink book chapter and it made me realize that it's really not all that bad once DS is past 5 years old. The highest risk of getting chronic HBV is before age 5.

I also found out for myself that HepB boosters are not required. They say it lasts for 20 years and that means immunity would start to leave at 31 for me but then 2 sentences later it says boosters are not needed I guess I will skip this one once I start going to births.

I asked DH for a reference and he said he would get it for me. He is in school for acupuncture and he learned this in his clean needle technique class. He did say that it might be HepC and not HepB that can stay on surfaces for a week.

I will check out inside vaccines too. I also saw that there were only 3,000 cases or so in the US in 2007 so that makes me feel better since only 1-2% of cases are chronic.