Andrew Doctor Visit and Vaccines

Andrew had his year appointment today and everything is going well for him, except the doctor is concerned about his weight.  He is 18.5 lbs and 29 1/2 in.  He went from the 50th% down to the 10th% for height and weight.  She asked a bunch of questions like is he eating well, lethargic, good diapers, things of that nature.  He seems to be totally fine to us and this isn't the first time a doctor has been concerned about height and weight for our children.  In fact, the same thing happened with Ryan and Hunter.  Any way, Andrew has to be seen back in 4-6 weeks to see if he has either maintained or gained.  If so, good.  If not, they want to start running tests.  Sean and I feel totally at peace and are trusting God. 

I have debated on even posting about this subject, but have decided to.  Not sure why.  When we had Ryan, Sean and I talked about whether we should vaccinate, however, we didn't do any research (mainly due to laziness on my part) and went ahead and vaccinated both Ryan and Hunter and Andrew.  However, I have always had a nagging feeling that I should at least know what I am injecting into my children.  Recently I decided to check out "The Vaccine Book" by Dr. Sears from my library.  This book was extremely helpful and informative for me.  I felt guilty for not doing my research before now.  Kind of the way I felt about not knowing about the food that we eat.  Now, I am going to start off by saying that I'm not saying vaccines are either good or bad.  I think they have helped to eradicate or nearly rid of multiple diseases from our nation.  I will also say or not say that I think it should be every parent's individual choice and I am no judge.  But after reading the book, which Dr. Sears is more pro-vaccine in my opinion, we have decided to do only a few selective vaccines.  This has been after much prayer and God's wisdom and guidance.  We think the DTaP, Rotovirus, PC, and HIB vaccines are important enough to continue, however, we are going to be declining the rest of them for now moving forward.  We of course will revisit the situation under other circumstances and/or situations.  The main reasons we have chosen this is because some of the vaccines, like MMR, chickenpox, hep A and B, and HPV are either pretty mild if gotten as a child or pretty highly unlikely to be gotten by a child.  Also, some of the ingredients in vaccines like human and animal tissues make me kinda weirded out.  Finally, the amount of aluminum in some is more than I would like.  Oh one more finally, some of the things that have been raised as concerns regarding vaccines, haven't been accurately studied or tested, so there are a lot of unknowns out there. 

I guess my main point in this post is to say, educate yourself!!!  Pick up a book that is unbiased and inform yourself on the subject.  From there, I feel you will feel confident in whatever choices you decide to make for your child.  It is worth the little bit of time and studying it takes to learn these things.  I wish I had done my homework years ago!