Vaccinations and Other Pleasantries

This was not William's face as he got his shots

Friday was William's first set of vaccinations. He was given the DTap-Hep B-IPV combination, the Polio, Pneumococcal and Rotavirus vaccines. He was also weighed, measured and had his hips compressed.

I knew it would be a startling experience and it was. I held Will on my lap while the nurse quickly injected him with three small-bore needles. Well, they looked small-bore to me, but they must have been pretty painful. Imagine the proportion of needle to thigh! What an adult wouldn't have even felt must have seemed like a piece of rebar being pushed through Will's skin. To add insult to injury, infants regularly have a punky, negative reaction to these foreign bodies, as weakened and harmless as they can be made. Fever, chills, vomiting, crankiness and worse are common reactions after a vaccination. Fortunately Will, who is perfect, chose to sleep the ickiness off only waking once in the afternoon to complain about his current state.

Still, I felt awful. It is just horrible to watch and even passively inflict pain on your child. His shocked and hurt expression as the nurse injected him (and she did as quickly and kindly as possible) was one I'm sure I'll see again but will never forget. William was easy to calm with some cuddling and "ssshhhhing" and conked out for the rest of the day waking only to eat a little bit.

Of course you'd have to be living under a rock to not have heard of the fear and hysteria surrounding childhood vaccinations. I'm lucky in that I'm married to Science Guy from the Isle of Logic and we discussed the possibility (nil) of not vaccinating and researched the origins of the cause of Bad Vaccines and Their Connection to Dreaded Autism. I also talked with the medical professionals in charge of Will and my care.
The vaccine/autism connection started with Dr. Andrew Wakefield- here's a link to his Wikipedia page. There is popular concern that vaccines and the preservatives in the vaccines are connected to autism and irritable bowel disease. This of course is patently untrue. There is no connection to autism and vaccines. Unfortunately the fear and hysteria have spread through popular culture enough so that there has been a resurgence of childhood diseases that are preventable by regular vaccination. Who gets measles and whooping cough anymore? Unvaccinated children, that's who. Shame on Dr. Wakefield for perpetrating the fear.

Don't get me wrong, there are risks associated with injecting any foreign body into something as delicate as an infant. He could have had a reaction to the vaccine and that could have been severe. It does happen. But let's keep our threats and risks clear and not perpetrate more fear and hysteria where there needn't be more.
In other news, our chubby little angel is weighing in at 9 pounds and 13 ounces. He looks adorable, totally in proportion so I was surprised that he weighed so little. It turns out our shorty is a shorty. He's in the 7th percentile for height, so he might be a jockey when he grows up.