This morning I take Microtoes along to week 2 of the postnatal group in my new village. Unfortunately for her, she falls fast asleep and misses out on the baby massage session. I explain she had her 8 week vaccinations yesterday, hence her sleepiness.
If truth be known I had forgotten what a traumatic experience it is for a mother to watch her baby being vaccinated. Microtoes had been sleeping deeply when I presented her to the nurse. She must have been having a nice dream as she had the faint flicker of a smile on the edge of her tiny lips.
When the first needle plunged into her chubby little thigh, her piercing, startled scream shot like a lightning bolt through my heart. As the third injection (and third heart-rending scream) took place the nurse simultaneously passed me some tissues to wipe away the silent tears streaming down my face. Microtoes recovered quicker than I did.
When discussion in the postnatal group naturally turns to vaccinations, I’m shocked to discover that none of the other women in the group are planning to vaccinate their babies. Not yet anyway. The friendly girl I’m sitting next to tells me she may give her son just the rotavirus vaccine: when he’s 9 months old.
I’m uncharacteristically speechless. I don’t want to antagonise the entire room in one fail swoop. I’ve only just moved to the village and these are my first potential local mummy friends. But similarly I don’t wish to remain silent on something I feel quite strongly about. So I start by asking questions.
It turns out the girl next to me – and the other mummies – are not 100% decided about the injections and they are attending a ‘talk’ on the subject matter in the village tomorrow morning, by a local homoeopathist. I try not to scoff. “But surely the homoeopathist will favour the natural approach?” I ask.
“Oh she gives the arguments for and against, and still gives homoeopathic treatment to babies who’ve had the jabs,” came the reply. Oh I bet she does, I think to myself.
The UK government’s National Health Service recommends giving the ‘5 in 1 vaccine (to protect against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio and Hib), the Pneumococcal jab, Meningitis B vaccine and Rotavirus vaccine from 8 weeks, with follow-on vaccines at 12 and 16 weeks.
I try to gently explain to the girl next to me that by not immunising your baby you are putting it at risk from life threatening illness. She counters this with the fact it is highly unlikely the baby will develop that illness. True, but even if there’s a 0.01% chance would you really want to put your baby at risk? I don’t say this. Nor do I point out the irony that if it’s “highly unlikely” her baby will develop a disease, it is thanks to the people that are vaccinating their babies.
Instead I try to sow the seed that by not vaccinating your own baby you are also putting other babies at risk from life-threatening diseases. I explain how at Microtoes’ 6 week postnatal check-up the doctor had told me only 50% of people living in the village bring their babies to be vaccinated, when there needs to be 85% vaccinated in order to guarantee the efficacy of the jabs. Put another way, even though I’ve vaccinated Microtoes she won’t be properly immunised. I think I’m too subtle. It ends up looking like I’m saying I needn’t have bothered vaccinating her.
When in fact I’m trying to say that if she – and the others – do not vaccinate their babies, it renders the jabs less effective for the parents who choose to vaccinate their babies. And there is good medical evidence to back this up: something that a village homoeopathist is not necessarily going to be educated in.
She concludes by diplomatically saying “well it’s up to each parent to decide what they want to do really.” And I want to shout “No, no no” but I’ve only just met the girl, so I stay quiet. And decide to blog about it instead.
The NHS website claims: “It may be tempting to say ‘no’ to vaccination and ‘leave it to nature’. However, deciding not to vaccinate your child puts them at risk of catching a range of potentially serious, even fatal, diseases.”
And alas, this is not purely anecdotal. In Catalonia, only last year, a little boy from Girona, near my husband’s hometown of Barcelona, died from diphtheria. It was widely reported in the local news. Why did he die? Because his parents chose to believe the anti-vaccination camp and not vaccinate their son. Later they spoke of their “terrible guilt” over the decision not to have him immunised.
That boy became the first child to contract the disease in Spain in almost 30 years. After this tragedy had unfolded, a further eight children were found to be carrying the diphtheria bacteria, but thankfully the disease did not develop given they had been vaccinated. Had this all happened in my village, however, where the vaccination rate is much lower, those eight children may well not have survived after contracting the disease.
Normally I agree wholeheartedly that ‘each parent should decide’ when it comes to whether they want to – or can – breastfeed their baby or not/ dress their son in pink and their daughter in blue or vice versa/ co-sleep (I still think this is risky..) or not. But hey it’s up to them and doesn’t affect anyone else.
But whether they vaccinate their baby or not? It could not only affect their own baby – enough to kill them – but also risks spreading these diseases to other babies and threatening their lives, as well as reducing the efficacy of any injection those other babies may (or may not) have had. Now that I couldn’t disagree with more.
Calamitous Mummy 