Parents Expressing Vaccine Concerns

Hey alaska_mommy.
What a great idea! Thanks for starting this exchange. I've been doing quite a bit of reading on the topic lately, so I'll post as soon as I have anything to share. By the way, I responded to you in the other forum before I saw this one. Also, I was searching through the popular discussions for anything vaccine-related and found this discussion from about a year ago. It's mostly anecdotal, and a little choppy as if it's possibly been edited, but well worth reading.

http://forums.webmd.com/3/newborn-and-baby-exchange/forum/1806

Thanks for that link, it was very informative. I hadn't even heard about the Tylenol problem with vaccines, but I can guarantee if DS gets any more I'll be looking into it before I give him any more.

I ran across a GREAT website yesterday,
http://www.vaccinetruth.org/new_page_1.htm
It talks about all the ingredients in vaccs, and much more.

After reading that, and other posts, I'm leaning more towards not giving any vacc's at all.

DS had a nasty reaction to his Rotavirus--at least we think it was the Rota, he was given the full 5-shot regime at 2 months old, one of which was DTaP so it was more like 8 shots I guess. That's the one and only time he's been vaccinated. To my knowledge, he didn't get the Hep B at the hospital as a newborn. Thank God, how crazy is that? Esp. if it wears off after 5 years--what are they thinking???

As for his reaction, he had a couple of times he vomited, diarrhea, low grade fevers and some mild somnolence, but most of all (and most troubling of all) he was extremely fussy. I was walking him and rocking him and bouncing him all day and part of the night for 10 days. I was EXHAUSTED afterwards. He had one episode one evening of being inconsolable--Nothing we did made him stop crying. We took him to ER then, afraid there was something wrong, he'd never been inconsolable before. There had always been some trick that worked to make him stop crying. And, he's never been inconsolable since.
At the ER they told me Rotavirus vacc can cause stomach cramps. GREAT! He already had a sensitive tummy and was gassy all the time, now this? Poor baby! They said if he doesn't get better in a few days bring him into the clinic. Well, we did, and he wasn't better, and wasn't better...10 days later the vaccine...or virus...ran its course and he did improve. But I think it may have set off his reflux. Everything that was already bothering him (gas, reflux, tummy) seemed like it got worse after that.
I talked to a fellow mommy who has a girl about the same age and she said her DD got the same exact reaction, 8-10 days long. And got it again when the doc recommended trying it again at 4 months to see if it would still give a reaction. Me, I said no way I want to go through THIS again, and no more vacc's. Luckily, too, we started seeing a pedi who said no problem to delay vacc's and encouraged us to do that.
Anyway, after reading up on the "encephalitic cry" like you suggested, that just scares me way too much to think about vaccines right now. Thank God, when I take him in for his well-baby's the doc doesn't pressure us at all, just asks if we're still waiting on vacc's and gives us pointers on what to look out for with pertussis, etc.
Thanks again!

hey guys,

i was banned from the other thread after my post. hopefully not from this one too ; ) i don't like to be silenced i was wondering if any one has read " dpt a shot in the dark" by HL Coulter, Ph.D., i stumbled across it in a library when i was about 36 weeks pregnant.

No not from this one for sure! I would love to hear your comments. I haven't read that but it sounds interesting! Another book I'd like to order when I have the $$ is "How to raise a vaccine-free child." I read the excerpt on Amazon.com and it sounded really good.
Feel free to sound off! I didn't like how the doc on the other thread was making his word sound like bible-truth and making the opposing views sound flat out wrong. "Misconceptions" and deceit," my foot. What about his misconceptions and deceit? Varicella encephalitis! Riiiiight...

I have vaccinetruth.org in my favorites already, and I agree. It is a great site. Lots of good info. In regard to your son's reaction, I didn't realize that he had had 8 vaccines total that day, including the DTaP. I should've known. The 2 month round of shots. That brings yet another issue to mind that may be a causative factor in his symptoms. A lot of the "research" done concerning the individual vaccines is shoddily designed, a lot of times seemingly deliberately so, as in studies obviously performed to achieve a predetermined result. A whole different problem altogether is that there has been little or no research done on any potential ill effects of the entire vaccine schedule altogether. What happens when you inject 8 different vaccines into a 2 month old? Are there any potential overload symptoms? If so, what are they? The CDC, FDA, AAP, and the pharmaceutical companies all extol the virtues of vaccines and the wisdom of the current schedule yet, to my knowledge, there is no research along these lines. This is one of the major flaws in any reporting system, as well as confusing the issue when those such as your son react. The symptoms of his reaction could've been caused by any of the individual shots, or all of them. The truth is that there is no way to know unless you were to repeat one of them by itself and he has another reaction. In that case, though, the second reaction is usually more severe than the first. That's why even the doctors will sometimes advise against giving a second dose of a vaccine that has caused a severe reaction. Granted, their idea of severe is a bit different from ours. If a child emitted that high-pitched, piercing cry out of nowhere, the doctor would want to check him, run tests, and monitor him to make sure everything was ok. When it occurs after a vaccine, it's "Don't worry! It's a normal response. Just give him a tylenol. He'll be ok." In either case, it could be something major such as encephalitis or a seizure, but with a vaccine involved, they don't even bother to check. Why? Because it's normal! Scary.

By "somnolence", do you mean excessive sleeping? Or possibly staring blankly like he was half-asleep, or dazed? Was he difficult to wake up? Not to scare you even more, but these are all possible signs of encephalitis, as well. It irritates me that doctors don't check the children to make sure they're ok. These reactions, from what I've read, are very common, as the docs themselves would tell you, yet the parents never even know what actually happened unless they're the very unlucky ones whose child ends up with obvious permanent damage. This is all without mentioning that the stats on vaccine reactions can't be reported unless we know what is occurring, physiologically. In order to know, the child must be examined.

This reminds me. I was sifting through another awesome site, reading a bit on the potential link between MMR and autism. It's a subject that I'm not sure about, but I've read so many anecdotal accounts of kids regressing after their MMR that I wanted to know more. I came across a transcript of an interview with Dr. Andrew Wakefield, one of the authors of a study published in the Lancet a while back concerning gastrointestinal illness in autistic children. His study was retracted by the Lancet. Anyway, I'll let him tell you his side of the story if you're interested. Dr. Mercola, the interviewer, is obviously a fan, so it's not a tough interview by any standard, but I feel that it's very enlightening. If you're not familiar with Wakefield's semi-recent fall from grace, you might read up on what he's been criticized for before reading the transcript. Here's the link:

http://www.whale.to/vaccine/InterviewAndrewWakefield.pdf

Gotta go for now. More later.

I hear what you're saying about wondering if 8 vacc's at the same time is a very good idea. Especially with a baby so young. Yikes.
About my LO, yes, excessive sleeping, for him. He's usually one to sleep lightly, and wake after an hour, but this time he took long naps, several hours at a time, and slept really well during the night. I joked that I wouldn't mind more of this...he wasn't difficult to wake and didn't have the staring as far as I could tell.
I totally agree about the "if they had this symptom and had not been vacc'd docs would check it out but with vacc's it's normal" thing. Crazy. Far as I know, he didn't have the "encephalitic cry" but my memory is foggy over the months from lack of sleep...I know he did cry hard and frequently and was very touchy/cranky about everything. He was a little monster for those 10 days and then got better but, in my estimation, never was quite as good as prior. A small-ish difference, but it seemed like it was there.
Anyway, thanks again for the good info!