Why? Because I had severe asthma attacks requiring hospitalization after most of my early jabs (as well as after some of my adult ones) and my next sister nearly died from her first MMR. Thus, doctors don’t *want* to vaccinate us, and suggest against it. When they do, it’s all done very carefully. Hasn’t stopped us from having to deal with lots of flak about it, lots of angry people, and lots of disbelief at the explanations.

I have an auto-immune disease treated with drugs that cause immune suppression. This means I’m at a much higher risk of getting anything and of it being much worse for me. Doesn’t mean I don’t respect that vaccination, like any other health decision, if a personal choice. It must be treated as one. Thank you, posted, for saying this.

For me, that was vaccinating. And it has already (most likely) saved my daughter’s life. But my interpretation of events is entirely subjective. Another person, faced with the same set of circumstances could easily have interpreted it in a different way.

It takes a big commitment to your decision to not vaccinate, when faced with the majority who do. And while I personally believe that the majority protects the minority, I am a passionate advocate of every parent’s right and need to choose what is right for them. Because in a worst case scenario, when a child is sick, there’s no majority, there’s just you and your family.

It is frightening when our children appear to change dramatically, seemingly overnight, and it’s understandable to grieve and process that change and the loss of the life we’d dreamed for them (as I did when I learned of the Boychick’s hypothyroidism), but we need to take care with what we say and what it means to the many, many of us who live with disabilities and atypicalities. It is emphatically not ok to present abled as the standard against which any deviation is seen as a devaluation. All people are persons, and are worthy of respect.

Maybe because I know these people in person and have seen it with my own eyes it is more believable. But I do know that there are dangers in the ingredients of vaccines, it is fact that there are known risks, and parents should be making informed decisions- whether that be to vaccinate, delay, selectively vax, or not vaccinate at all.

Steph

I have found that type of thing to be frustrating too. We had a vacation planned with friends once and their daughter, who was about 3 or 4 at the time, had contracted chicken pox. Our daughter was 15 months and hadn’t received the chicken pox vaccine yet (although our almost 4 year old had). Our friends called and asked us if we wanted them to stay home. Our answer was that no, they should come, and we could just keep their daughter away from our daughter. The important word in that sentence for me, was “WE”.

As it turned out, they didn’t do anything to attempt to keep their daughter away from ours. I was the only one who kept telling her “please don’t come near the baby, we don’t want her to get sick”. When we asked our friends to help, they said: “We can’t really tell her that she can’t play”, which is not what I was asking of them. I just wanted them to ask her to stay away from the baby. For the rest of that day, I wore my daughter on my back far away from the little girl. For the next few days, I opted out of the group activities that involved their daughter and stayed with my daughter.

If she had contracted it, she would have had the chicken pox right at the time of our return flight home, which would have been horrendous for us (itchy baby on a 7 hour flight) and unfair to those around us who we might have been exposing.

All that to say, I agree – “If you choose to not vax–fine, but please be responsible community members about it!”