A One Sided Discussion on why we chose not to Vaccinate Tim.

I'm a believer in treat what is there, not what is not. Do we schedule C-sections in advance because we think there may be a complication? No! Should we pump our kids with toxins to prevent a disease that they may or may not contract, and if they should contract may or may not have a serious response to? I don't personally think so. In my opinion the risk of serious complications from vaccines, especially when you consider most kids get 30+ vaccinations today, far exceed the risk of serious complications from diseases. I've pulled up the actual statistics on them before. The number of children who have serious reactions to the Chicken Pox Vaccine for example (this is just the only one I can remember) are far greater than the number of children who have serious reactions to Chicken Pox as a disease. As a portion of the population, in statistical figures, a child has a less than 1% chance of having a serious reaction to chicken pox. If you have a family history of severe reaction to an illness by all means vaccinate your children against that illness. If, on the other hand, you have every reason to believe your child could fight off an illness why vaccinate for it?

This next portion was written for a forum in response to a question of whether I think there can be such a thing as a safe non-harmful vaccine.

Honestly, I'm not sure if I believe there can be. Bring Newton's law if you must "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." Before vaccines many diseases were basically a rite of passage during childhood, everyone got them. Then because a subset of the population died from complications we started immunizing. It can be argued 'till everyone is blue in the face whether the vaccines decreased incidence or the increase in cleanliness/standard of living did. But for the sake of this discussion let's say the vaccines decreased childhood incidence of these diseases. Suddenly when these vaccinated kids reached adulthood adults started getting these diseases, and they were worse than if they'd had them as kids ... hence booster shots. But if you get the disease immunity is lifelong, the vaccine, not so much.

So then also, we start vaccinating against more and more things, combined with an over-use of antibacterial products and a decrease in breastfeeding little immune systems don't have any way to develop normally. Your immune system is like your brain, it needs practice to know what to do when encountering an illness of any kind, vaccines don't really provide that. It's like teaching a child to bake cookies from a cookie mix, then handing them all the ingredients to make them from scratch and expecting them to know what to do. It doesn't really work that way.

Then, vaccines (other than the flu vaccine) use static viruses, but viruses mutate. In a healthy, historic population those minor mutations would be encountered along the course of a lifetime and not affect a lifetime immunity, the constant exposure to sick community members provided natural boosts and a learning experience for the immune system with the mutated virus, no personal illness required. But with the population vaccinated this constant exposure to minor mutations does not happen and eventually the minor mutations stack up to be a major change and the vaccines start to "fail" the new virus is so different everyone comes down with it, young and old alike.

AND without diseases to fight, viruses and bacteria to kill, etc, the immune system eventually loses track of what it's supposed to do. This is a combined fault of vaccines, overuse of antibiotics, and overuse of antibacterial products. When this happens there are many possibilities. The immune system can become too weak to fight even the simplest disease. The immune system can go into overdrive at the slightest provocation since it never learned how much is needed for what and attack the body (as in Lupus). The immune system can simply fail to kill malformed cells, which then multiply rapidly and may develop into cancer.

These are all my thoughts developed through my personal research findings. It is my personal opinion that with diseases, as with so many other things, we need to stop running from nature and learn to work with it. Fevers are scary ... but we've recently learned that shutting down a body's appropriate fever response (not dangerously high, appropriate) often does more harm than food. Diseases are scary too, but should we be trying to prevent them totally or learning to help our body handle them efficiently as we now try to do with fevers?

For what it's worth I also feel that if you choose to not vaccinate your child simply because the diseases are no longer around, Hence you are relying on herd immunity and expect your child to never get a "vaccine preventable disease" you are making the wrong choice. If you choose to not vaccinate you should make that choice knowing full well that your child may contract any of the diseases vaccinations cover. And you should be ready to face that possibility head on.

Here's to no more school!

Today I dropped my little D off at his dad's house for 2 weeks. Since these periods are always hard for me I decided I was going to make a happy blog post instead of dwelling on it. :)

So, as of yesterday at 12:00 Noon my little D will no longer be going to public school. From here on out unless and until we all decide otherwise, he's going to be home schooled. It will be a lot of work, and most likely a lot of fun. I think home schooling will be perfect for my little guy. Just the other day we were at the ER with his brother (mouth wound that took a bit too long to stop bleeding for mama's comfort, nothing big) and he switched the TV off of Cartoon Network and on to the Science Channel. He was watching these shows about black holes and Hawking Radiation and all this stuff that hurts my head with avid fascination. Not only does he want to learn about this stuff but he already really comprehends a great deal of it ... at not quite 7 years old.

His teacher this past year at school actually told me she could not challenge him in math, and it seems, in science either. We've got our work cut out for us but I really think that my little guy will excel if given the chance, so here we go, into all new realms of fun!

A Letter to Grandparents

Grandma/Grandpa please keep in mind that while I am a child and should be allowed to have fun I still must have limits, just as my mother/father had limits at your house.

Please realize that when you tell me "don't tell mom/dad" what you're really saying is "lie for me". Please keep in mind that if you say "mom/dad doesn't have to know" or "what mom/dad doesn't know won't hurt her/him" what you're really saying is again, please lie for me. You are also putting me in a very difficult situation, you are making me the bad guy. Either I lie to my parents which I know is bad, or I disappoint you and get you in trouble. This is not fair to me, I'm just a kid!

If my parents say that I'm allergic to X please believe them and do not feed me ANYTHING containing X. If you are not certain then simply do not feed it to me. Even if I don't have an anaphylactic reaction if I am allergic to something it makes me sick when I eat it. I don't like to feel sick, I may like the snack/treat you gave me but I don't know it has X in it, that's your job to keep track of. I'm just a kid!

If my parents tell you that when I have sugar/red dye/etc it makes me have issues, please believe them. I don't like to be unable to pay attention and be constantly yelled at. You feeding me something that tastes good for 5 minutes isn't worth the next 5 hours of being in trouble!

Please remember that my parents rules are the rules, even if you think they're silly. If my parents say that I am not allowed to have Jello/Koolaid/Ice Cream and you give it to me you are teaching me to break the rules, is that the type of role model you want to be to me?

Lastly, please remember that while cookies, ice cream, cake, presents, etc are awesome what I really want from you is hugs and kisses. Time and attention are worth so much more to me than anything else you can give me, please don't rely on the gifts that my parents may or may not approve of to make me love you. It's not necessary, I already love you!

Lots of love,
Your Grandchild