Why did you choose to vaccinate your child?

[*LittleMissSummer*]

Why not? Like others have said I never once considered not vaccinating. I was as a child. I know what i am doing, like many other families is the right thing.

[Lenny]

Why not? Like others have said I never once considered not vaccinating. I was as a child. I know what i am doing, like many other families is the right thing.

Schmickers is trying to write an information piece for BB. He is asking for reasons why some of us chose to vaccinate.

[*LittleMissSummer*]

Schmickers is trying to write an information piece for BB. He is asking for reasons why some of us chose to vaccinate.

And i gave my answer...?

I chose to vaccinate as i see no reason why i wouldn't. I was as a child and i know its the right thing to do for my children.

[Rouge]

LMS I think the "Why not" came across as a little defensive, as has your now reply Unintentionally I'm sure... but this happens sometimes with the typed word

It's all good! Thanks for your answer

[Livinthedream]

Because I am more scared of the diseases than I am of the vaccines.
It was an agonising descision though, especially the 6 week ones.
They are so tiny and perfect, it seems so wrong.

[ellasmummy]

For us the benefits outweigh the risks. Although vaccinating doesnt guarantee my child won't ever get the illness, the severity would be decreased. I could never forgive myself if my child died from a preventable disease or gave an illness to a baby too young or unable to be immunised.

[meow]

My mother was a nurse and very pro-vaccination and she told terrible stories of nursing dying children with tetanus etc. She did tell me that she felt babies were being given too many vaccines at a younger and younger age though.

I think this point of view greatly shaped my opinion as I felt vaccines were effective and important, but I tried to do a lot of research to determine how to vaccinate my first son. Based on that we did vaccinate him, but we delayed the vaccines one needle at a time and skipped some we didn't feel he needed (such as rotavirus and chicken pox). So I'd say we were pro-vaccine but not pro-vaccine schedule.

We have a history of autism in the family so we delayed the MMR vaccine till 2 years old and I tried to read a lot about the autism-MMR link. I found the Wakefield study to be an incredibly poor piece of research so based on that we dismissed the link as a problem.

Now that our eldest son is autistic I have done more reading and we have decided to stop vaccinating our children. I know this question is not about why you don't vaccinate but I feel the evolution of our decision is important in understanding why we did vaccinate.

We only found out our first son was autistic just before our second son was due to have his first vaccinations and we were travelling overseas. Based upon what we had already researched, and my concern about travelling through international airports with an unvaccinated baby we decided to vaccinate him and those are the only vaccinations he has had.

[Inertia]

To be perfectly honest, with the first four there as no higher well informed decision making going on. It is just what people did.

I started delay vaxing following my nieces passing using less than 24 hours after her 2mo needles. She was the first of the kids in my family to get the new infanrix hexa that they started using in NSW and I simply could not bring myself to let them stick it in the arms of my 2mo baby. They couldn't find proof that it contributed, but they couldn't find proof of anything, so that is not proof that it didn't contribute, iykwim.

Anyway, I didn't even look into vaccines until after that happened. I was just being a good lemming. And on that part, you can quote me, lol.

[Ambersky]

Sorry to be brief..

I think we are incredibly privileged and lucky to live in a time and place where we don't have to expect to loose one or more of our children to illness, My Great-grandmother lost 3 of her 8 children to disease that is now preventable, My mothers eldest brother also died of the side effects of an illness we now vaccinate for.

Herd Immunity works, i want to do my part in a society trying to minimise disease.
No amount of reading has found facts that convince me the potential risks outweigh the potential benifits.

[Muraho]

a) Benefits far outweigh the risks IMHO

b) I did enough research of my own to be comfortable with my decision before going ahead

c) Spending a lot of time with sick kids in Africa does kinda sway you into the very very very PRO camp...

I will say though that I have delayed certain ones; and I don't necessarily go along with the 'oh he's 18 months, so he needs blah blah blah' stuff the MCHN/Doctors might say. I tend to look at a wide range of things before deciding what's a good time for him to get his next vaccination.