Motherly Musings – Immunisations

We never considered not having our daughter immunised. It was something we always planned to do; we would rather a little bit of a disease be put into her body than risk her catching something serious and something awful happening to her. And I know that there is supposedly lots of horrible stuff in the injections (although mercury is not in them anymore – unless you read certain things saying it is), but I choose to trust the Department of Health and vaccinate and hope nothing bad happens to her. I hate her having them, and I hate the thought of putting horrible ingredients and disease into her little body, but I feel it’s the best thing to do.

I can kind of understand why people would choose not to vaccinate but it scares me that some of these diseases might be coming back because of this, and I worry for the babies that are pre-vaccination age. I don’t want a debate. I think it’s a hard decision for any parent to make, and after all we all just want to do the best for our babies. We are not making our choice to annoy other people or to make a point.

It’s so hard because there is so much information out there, so much mis-information and it is hard to know who and what you can trust. And then there’s the scaremongering and separating the fact from fiction, and bloody hell how do you make an informed decision? I think most of us may doubt our decision at some point or worry what might happen even when like us, you never really questioned whether you would vaccinate or not.

Yesterday Ava had her 12-month immunisations, her two boosters and the MMR. I had read up a bit about splitting them up so they would be given a few weeks apart as it seems like a lot all at once for her body to take and it scared me. Lots of people choose to do this and it seemed like a sensible idea to me, despite her having to go through it twice. Even the red book has them a month apart. Most of what I found was just mother’s opinions on baby forums and the discussions always seem to escalate and cause a debate when it comes to baby’s jabs. Everyone thinks what they have read/heard/been told is right. But everyone also wants what is best for their little one.

We had a really lovely nurse last time who was willing to discuss options with us, and I was hoping for her again but we got a different one this time. She was very nice but I felt like she wasn’t really giving us the option to split them (although I would have insisted if I had been sure). She said until recently there were given a month apart but now it was actually recommended that babies have them at the same time, plus there is obviously less trauma for them. We decided that we would do them all together. I had to trust in the medical professional in front of me at the time. That was the right decision for us.

Ava was a complete star and only cried with one of the boosters (the same one that hurt her last time), and quickly got distracted with a mummy cuddle and the nurse to grin at. She wasn’t given a sticker though. Bloody NHS cutbacks.