Vaccines

[dulcemariamar]

So I got to the section about vaccines in a book that I am reading about parenting. The book is American so it talked about how some people are delaying vaccines or just deciding not to give them to their kids. I have heard about outbreaks of things like whooping cough back in the States. :-| But nothing over here in Spain.

I was just wondering if you hear about people in your host country, delaying or skipping vaccines. Is this only happening in the States or is this a new trend?

[CakeLover]

After I had DS, the hospital offered a whopping cough booster (I think) to both DH and I. I took it since I knew it had been a long time since I had received it and there had been an outbreak here.
When I hear about people skipping or delaying vaccines its usually from the US. I haven't heard to much about it here.

[glitterfart]

The Robert Koch Institute in Germany rec. that all adults get a booster for the Pertusis vax, so DH and I got one which was included in the tetanus vax.

Lots of people skip or delay things here in Germany, which is a bad idea IMO because most of the parents who do it are so very uninformed or misinformed about them...

[grosnl19]

Funny when we were visiting the US last week people were asking what we were doing. We plan on doing all the recommended ones. DH and I were both vaccinated as kids and turned out fine :-)

[crimsonandclover]

Jul 19, 2012 7:37:22 GMT -5 grosnl19 said:

Funny when we were visiting the US last week people were asking what we were doing. We plan on doing all the recommended ones. DH and I were both vaccinated as kids and turned out fine :-)

While I don't necessarily agree with this logic, we are also on the regular vaccination schedule for DD. Our pedi was relieved to hear it, though, as our city is very green, and apparently there are lots of parents doing alternate schedules or no vaccinations. Our city is also very international, and there are people coming in all the time from all over the world. I figure at least some of them have not been vaccinated and *could* be carrying one of these diseases, so I'd prefer to get DD vaccinated asap. Personally, all of our friends in the city are on the regular schedule, but I have no trouble believing that many others aren't.

[irish]

Here in Ireland, the one that is most contentious is the MMR (Mumps, Measles and Rubella) which is given at 12 months and then a booster at 4/5 years old. There had previously been links to autism but these have since been refuted and in fact the doctor in question has been totally discredited.

The alleged link was around 10-15 years ago and so there are many kids that in early teens who are not immunised against these potentially deadly diseases. In the last month or two there was a big outbreak of measles in the very south of the country and the affected people were nearly all between 12-14 from the same school... there was an outbreak in Spain/France a while ago and someone must have been in contact with that outbreak and brought it back to Ireland with them.

We have all of N's vaccines done now, even if we were a month or two late with the last lot (poor organisation on our part...) and there is no known reason that I wouldn't get them for her or subsequent babies.

[americaninoz]

I've never heard of doing a delayed schedule here - we just got dd's vaccines as they recommend here in Oz, which when I looked up the MN schedule was very similar

[anna7602]

I have no idea what French parents do early on, but like in the States, if you want to go to public school, you have to have certain vax all caught up by age 3 or 4. DD was only missing one vaccination before we came here and it was one she would have needed by kindergarten in the U.S. (hep B).

We got all the major ones, but delayed certain ones until school, like chicken pox (which she got at age 2.5 before preschool when I think it's usually reco'd at 12 or 18 months). All of these decisions were made in coordination with our pedi. According to her, one of the major reasons so many shots are reco'd at one time in the U.S. is to encourage compliance, because people are generally less likely to come in on their own for separate shots. As long as she (our pedi) knows parents will come in, she has no problem spacing certain ones out and is quite vocal about the ones that really should be given on a strict schedule.

[mouseinlux]

Here in Lux I'm not sure how prevalent non vaccing is but I know that it's also getting big in the UK. We were just talking about that the other day with my group of Mum friends (we're all from the UK). All of us follow the local schedule.
DH wanted to question which vaccines we gave E, I flat out told him no. His Mum put some BS in his head that not all of them are needed, I gave him some examples of why they are needed and he's never questioned it again.

[anna7602]

Jul 20, 2012 2:12:36 GMT -5 mouseinlux said:

DH wanted to question which vaccines we gave E, I flat out told him no. His Mum put some BS in his head that not all of them are needed, I gave him some examples of why they are needed and he's never questioned it again.

I want to agree with this in theory, but if you compare vax schedules, there are actually some differences and I don't think it's totally crazy to have questions. For example, one of the vax I delayed and had real hesitations about was chicken pox. We delayed until the last possible moment, when DD needed it to start preschool in the U.S. It turns out it's not even a standard or required vaccination in France. When I handed her vaccination card over to the director of her school here, she commented on it and thought a chicken pox vax was bizarre.

I don't think delaying/questioning= blanket refusal of all vaccinations, but the two often get confused with each other in society.

[irish]

Anna, we don't get the chicken pox vax here in Ireland at all... not on the schedule. There is chicken pox "season" and we were lucky with N this year that she didn't get it when her 2 youngest cousins got it around Easter time.

There was a case in the news here in the last month or so about a woman who was "on the run" because she didn't want her child to have the MMR booster. Parents have to sign a consent form and she refused. However, the father of the child wanted the booster and it ended up in court and the judge ruled in the father's favour as immunistation is the recommended course of action. The authorities came looking for her to immunise the child but she had already left the area and was making impassioned pleas online to other parents to come to her defence...
actually don't know how that one ended up... she sounded a bit crazy from what I read of her pleas...

[clogged]

Attachment parents are big on delayed/alternate vax programs. BIG big. Like, I almost had my attachment parent membership revoked because I vaxed everything and on schedule big.

Which as a movement is (in my opinion) more popular stateside than here- so I rarely hear about delay/no vax here, but all my pregger/young parent friends are constantly discussing it.

[blushing]

James has had all the recommended vaccines and the TB one (because we are going to RSA at the end of the year and TB is a problem there). We did do the last ones on a delayed schedule, but that is because he has a weakened immune system because of one of the creams that he is on because of his eczema. And even though he had the MMR he still got rubella.
(Oh and we are not from the USA or do not currently live in the USA)

[bail229]

I did know one person who didn't vaccinate her children (I worked with her about 4 yrs ago) but I don't know anyone on a delayed schedule. We vaccinate on the regular schedule. They even give you money to vaccinate here. When your child turns 3 or 4 (not sure which) you get a few hundred dollars for completing all their vaccines. I'm not sure of all the details but if the govt wants to give me some money for something I was going to do anyway that's fine by me!