My Journey Through Childhood Vaccinations

Over the last few months I have had several people ask me to write about childhood vaccinations. This is a topic that many of you know I am very passionate about. I knew when I decided to start sharing my thoughts and research about such a controversial topic that it would take a lot of time and I kept putting it off. Since I am pregnant and due with my second child in a few months I am starting to research and get up to date again. I decided this would be a great time to share my journey and thoughts as I seek to make my decisions regarding vaccinating my second child.

My next post will be about the first decision a parent is faced with when their newborn is in the hospital, but right now I want take the time to share a little bit about my background with vaccinations and my first son. When my son was born I had thought about vaccinations, but had not done thorough research until he was a few months old. I encourage anyone that is expecting to do all of your research before your baby is born. When you have a newborn it isn't the easiest to be motivated to research and make such a big decision. Also, you have to be ready from the beginning as I learned the hard way. For example while we were in the hospital when my son had just been born I had no idea they had taken him to get a Hep. B vaccination! I thought I had time to decide and was later very disappointed that he had already had a vaccination and I didn't even know about it! So, obviously my son had his first shot in the hospital and then a select few at the first appointment it was offered at the Pediatricians office. From that point on because of much thought and research my husband and I made a decision to decline the rest of the vaccinations and revisit the idea when he was older. Our son is currently almost 2 years old and we are still not interested in giving him any vaccinations anytime soon. Why have we made this decision? I will begin sharing my thoughts and research in the next post.