Delayed Vaccination Schedule

Our ped here is the go to guy for the crunchy no vax peeps. We vaccinate but I sought him out because I knew he wouldn't give me a hard time about co sleeping, breastfeeding etc like I have experienced before. Next time I'm there I will see what they say about possibly putting other patients at risk. Honestly I've never thought of it that way before.
The reason we didn't do an alternative vaccine schedule is because I avoid the germy Peds office as much as possible!
Our ped in LA was awesome. He insisted on the most important vaccines that could pose a risk to other patients, like pertussis, but was fine if parents wanted to opt out of Hep B and Polio for example.

[niener]

I think doing five shots at once is unnecessary and creates difficulty in determining which vax your child may be reacting to. We do no more than three at a time but prefer to keep it to two. I just go in for a nurses visit in between. No big deal. But our pediatrician knows us and trusts we will keep our kiddos up to date on their shots.

This strikes a chord with me because my body overreacts to just about every foreign substance I put in it. I'm that person that actually gets all the side effects listed on the bottle. I got my first ever flu shot this year (inactive of course) and the next morning I felt like I'd been hit by a mack truck. I had to take a short round of antibiotics earlier this year for a mild infection (first antibiotics taken since I was 5) and it took me nearly a month to recover. Anything more than one Excedrin makes me dizzy and feel like I'm gonna hurl. Point being, if my kids are anything like me they will have adverse reactions to things most other kids may not, so for that reason we may end up choosing a delayed schedule depending on how they react. But I can understand why some peds simply refuse to do delayed vax. It probably has a lot to do with compliance, or lack thereof. People miss appointments all the time, so to take an already high frequency well-child visit schedule and basically double it is a lot to expect of most people. While I'm certain parents like ST would have no problem keeping their appts, you have to consider the other end of the spectrum as well, the people that reschedule multiple times for every appt. A lot of peds probably just don't trust people to stick with a more complicated schedule, but that's just another reason to develop a good relationship with your pediatrician like Pollyanna so they trust you to keep up your end of the deal.

I can't imagine any pediatrician supporting no vax. Are there really some that do? To leave a kid completely unprotected from measles, diptheria, polio, or any other disease that caused devastating pandemics prior to the 1900s is just reckless. There is no reason a child should be inflicted with polio in 2011.

[SoonerTexan]

I have posted the schedules below. One thing that bothered me about Dr. Sears schedule (at least as I understand it) is that he recommends MMR separately which is REALLY hard to find (basically impossible according to some message boards I've read). This leads many parents to delay it until his latest recommended start time which means some kids aren't protected from MMR until 3.5 years.

Like Cassy posted, some of the info in the book is outdated. Here are the updates (though some of the links aren't working...noticed that a lot with the Dr. Sears website)

http://www.askdrsears.com/topics/vac...s-vaccine-book

FWIW, while I'm still trying to figure out exactly what I want to do, I will probably be doing a schedule closer to the CDC's recommendations vs. the alternative schedule. My biggest concern is having 3+ shots done at one appt, so I plan to do multiple appts. It will suck work-wise, but luckily my new schedule will help me accommodate the many appointments. I know I wont do Varicella at all and am not sure about Gardasil, but I don't have to worry about that one for a long time! However, I do plan to do the rest pretty quickly, compared with what I might do with later children because:

A. She will be in child care of some sort, possibly with another IMSNer , and I want to respect/protect all of our children.
B. Parkland is full of nasty, nasty things and I consider having a daddy exposed to that all day enough of a risk to be concerned about.

If I can stay home with later children, I might consider delaying some for a longer period of time.

So, T&S, if you do move to Dallas (fingers crossed), your child will be safe around mine

ETA: A few other things

--I have to wonder how good of a system VAERS is for documenting adverse reactions given the amount of effort it takes to submit. How many adverse reactions are A. actually attributed to a vaccine vs. "it must have been something else" (especially when health care providers are touchy about the needs for vaccines) and B. reported at all? How many parents know about VAERS? My guess is most don't.

--I have a problem with this logic (from a WebMD article):

She says the CDC’s vaccine schedule has been used for decades, but “we don’t know what happens with these alternative schedules or whether or not we will have the same public health impacts.”

The schedule has been changed almost every year and looks drastically different from what was recommended decades ago (apparently an official schedule has only been published since 2002).

--Bottom line, the CDCs job is to protect public health, not individuals. Yes, individuals are part of the public, but the CDC knows some small percentage of children are going to suffer adverse reactions/die because of the vaccines they recommend. It's a legitimate risk to take given the overall good vaccines provide. However, as a parent, my job is to protect my child. I believe vaccines are part of that, but if I can do anything to keep my child from being part of that small percentage, I will. I don't think that is unreasonable.

[HouseofWool]

I was talking to our ped the other day about Gardacil and she mentioned that there its new evidence of HPV being linked to additional types of cancers, not just cervical. I haven't looked into it yet as C is still a couple years away from the first dose.

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[Vanquisher]

I was talking to our ped about Guardacil for R. I will have to look that up. Right now they mainly vax girls, but I'd like to get him the vax anyway.

[TulipsAndSunscreen]

--I have to wonder how good of a system VAERS is for documenting adverse reactions given the amount of effort it takes to submit. How many adverse reactions are A. actually attributed to a vaccine vs. "it must have been something else" (especially when health care providers are touchy about the needs for vaccines) and B. reported at all? How many parents know about VAERS? My guess is most don't.

Most companies take the adverse events reporting EXTREMELY seriously as do most physicians. I work in biotech and even as an independent firm, because we sometimes speak to patients, we are required to report every mention of an adverse event. These are investigated and of course the ones that are caused by something else are removed but most are recorded when they are above a certain grade.

A. She will be in child care of some sort, possibly with another IMSNer , and I want to respect/protect all of our children.
B. Parkland is full of nasty, nasty things and I consider having a daddy exposed to that all day enough of a risk to be concerned about.

If I can stay home with later children, I might consider delaying some for a longer period of time.

So, T&S, if you do move to Dallas (fingers crossed), your child will be safe around mine

The childcare/Daddy is a germ mule are the reasons I'm not questioning vaxing on time. I'm still deciding on Hep B but because we plan to take the kids to Kenya at some point, we will probably do it. In fact that's another reason for our completely vaxxing on time.

ST - Fingers crossed!

[GreyhoundsRUs]

I was talking to our ped about Guardacil for R. I will have to look that up. Right now they mainly vax girls, but I'd like to get him the vax anyway.

Our ped was just talking about the fact that they are starting to do them for boys. We will be getting it for all our kiddos, regardless of gender.

[MissCrabette]

ST, I'm really curious why you would choose not to vaccinate for varicella. Sure, it's not a life-threatening disease for most people, but in my case I was out of school for close to 2 weeks, I was miserable, and I was left with some ugly scars. Even Dr. Sears supports vaccinating against it: http://www.askdrsears.com/topics/chi...en-pox-vaccine

As for Gardasil, I can see how some people might think that they don't need it because they assume their daughters won't have sex before marriage, but that's simply not realistic. Your child might not share your religious views. Even if she does, there are several other ways she could be exposed, some more likely than others, but why take the chance?

[GreyhoundsRUs]

As for Gardasil, I can see how some people might think that they don't need it because they assume their daughters won't have sex before marriage, but that's simply not realistic. Your child might not share your religious views. Even if she does, there are several other ways she could be exposed, some more likely than others, but why take the chance?

This is our thinking. Why not do it - getting the shot doesn't green-light them for sex. They will or won't have premarital sex regardless of the vaccine. We will probably tell our kids that the shots protect against HPV, and HPV can cause cancer, and that like (list of STDs/STIs), HPV is a sexually transmitted disease - but that there is no shot to protect against xyz other diseases.

[Deebs]

HepB is the shot that SHOCKS me that anyone would delay beyond a couple of months. I have to imagine it is due to lack of information. The reality is this - children under 5 rarely show signs of HepB. Also, it is transmitted via bites (just wanted to add that it's not the only source of transmission - just the one that I worry a/b with my kiddos at their ages). As someone who has children who are toddlers or older, I realize that I have never had a child bitten at daycare. In fact, none of my children ever had a bite until I was a SAHM. I had one child bitten at the playground by a stranger, and another bit at an indoor play place by a stranger. I honestly don't know if those children had HepB, but I don't worry because my children are vaccinated against it. Another reason I was happy that my parents had me fully immunized (and this might sound silly) - when I started working in healthcare, one of the people in my orientation "class" had to be vaccinated for everything because her parents hadn't had her vaccinated at all. It delayed her being able to work, and was painful!

[HouseofWool]

Here is a link to the CDC on HPV and the relationship to head and neck cancers. Full disclaimer - I have not read the article yet.

[Pollyanna]

ST, I'm really curious why you would choose not to vaccinate for varicella. Sure, it's not a life-threatening disease for most people, but in my case I was out of school for close to 2 weeks, I was miserable, and I was left with some ugly scars. Even Dr. Sears supports vaccinating against it: http://www.askdrsears.com/topics/chi...en-pox-vaccine

Even with the vax your child can get chicken pox. Our oldest had the vax AND the booster and still got a very nasty case of the chicken pox. Missed a week of eighth grade and had pox covering her entire body. I will make sure our other girls have their titers checked when they are older because my concern is that the vax will no longer be effective which will put their babies at risk if they were to get chicken pox during pregnancy (I am afraid we will see this happening more than we'd like with the next generation).

[TulipsAndSunscreen]

I had my titers checked on all my vaccines before I went to Kenya. Would def recommend that to anyone traveling abroad or before college. Pertussis is also one that wears off in your mid 20s.

[MissCrabette]

Pollyanna, I'm aware that kids can still get varicella in spite of being vaccinated, but the same is true of the flu shot, for example.

I know this is out there, but people don't (or shouldn't) stop wearing seatbelts in their cars or helmets on their motorcycles just because they can still die in a horrible crash in spite of those precautions. We have all these things at our disposal, and it boggles my mind that we choose not to take full advantage of them. I don't recall if it was Scarlett or TulipsAndSunscreen who mentioned this (probably both), but there are poor people all over the world who don't even have access to all these vaccinations.

[diggitydot]

All of our kids will be getting the Gardasil shots soon, including DS. Crap. I also need to get DD2 in for her meningitis shot since she's almost 12. (Schools here require it.)