Every day I look at Ashni, she seems just a little bit bigger. Even in the span of a day, Chris will remark that she has grown between the time he left for work and the time he got back. She’s now at least 4 lbs heavier than her birth weight and she’s 3 inches taller – two weeks ago, at her 2 month pediatrician visit, she weighed in at 12 lbs 5 oz. Chris and I find it crazy that a person can grow so much by consuming only breast milk, nature is an amazing thing! Ashni is clearly thriving and we’re so very fortunate that all is well.
A couple weeks ago, we weren’t so sure. Her initial visit with the doctor was good and I was even commended for doing a great job feeding her since she was growing so well. But then the nurse administered her first round of vaccines. First we fed Ashni her initial dose of the 3 dose oral rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq. I was unhappy with the ingredient profile – after being so cautious to limit artificial ingredients and preservatives in my own diet to produce cleaner milk, it felt ridiculous to feed her those kinds of things directly. But I had gone back and forth for a really long time and finally decided to go ahead with it. Next, she got her first DTaP shot, Sanofi’s Daptacel. This one made us both unhappy. Poor Ashni screamed when the needle went in her thigh and I had to nurse her for quite awhile before her pained crying subsided. Because whooping cough has made a resurgence in Austin and can be fatal for infants, I had convinced myself that it was worth it for her to be vaccinated against it. But it was a very tough decision. The more I researched things, the more I felt stuck between a rock and a hard place. I read The Vaccine Book by Dr. Sears which goes into detail about vaccine ingredients, side effects, and the diseases they are meant to protect against. Turns out that DTaP has aluminum in it, and when aluminum accumulates in the body, it can lead to a number of different neurological problems and other chronic illnesses. And the rotavirus vaccine contains live disease causing germs that can appear in baby’s stools for up to 15 days.
Well, Ashni did not seem herself after her vaccines. She was excessively tired and not eating much. Also, she got extremely colicky at nighttime – every evening around dinnertime, she would cry inconsolably. It really scared me, but I kept feeding her as much as she’d let me and we waited it out. She eventually started eating more and became less fatigued, but she still continued to cry for a couple hours each night after that. Ashni is generally a good tempered baby and it’s obvious that her nighttime cries are a result of pain. In fact, a movie that every parent of a newborn should watch is Dunstan’s Baby Language – it goes into detail about how a baby’s cry sounds can be interpreted to tell you what the baby needs: “Eh” = burp me, “neh” = feed me, “heh” = physical discomfort (wet diaper/hot/cold/etc), “airh” = lower gas pain, “ow” = tired. Most of Ashni’s evening cries involve “eh” and “airh,” but there’s also a distinctive pain sound that started after her first round of vaccines. I sometimes wonder if her tummy hurts from a mild case of rotavirus or something but there’s really no telling.
I hate having to gamble with the health of my baby, and now I completely understand why some parents choose not to vaccinate. In an effort to possibly prevent one illness, other unintentional harm can be caused. So do you risk the disease or risk the known and unknown side effects of the vaccine? No matter what you do, you’re taking a chance with your child’s health, and it’s not a fun position to be in. Instead of obsessing over vaccines, why don’t people talk more about how to improve immune health and decrease exposure to disease causing agents? This would involve consuming natural antibodies in mother’s milk and keeping away from daycares or other places where sick kids congregate. Unfortunately these measures are very difficult to live by in American culture. With the pressure to return to work soon after giving birth, many mothers have no choice. And milk supply decreases when a mother is put under more stress or when she nurses her baby less frequently. It seems crazy to me that mothers are so often encouraged to be apart from their infants when the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends feeding a baby only breast milk for the first 6 months of its life, and continuing breastfeeding until the child is at least one year old, if not longer.
I’ll do my best to give Ashni a good start, but there’s no telling what will happen. And in terms of her future vaccinations, I still don’t have my mind made up on what to do. My original plan was to follow Dr. Sears’ selective schedule, but now I’m leaning towards waiting for her to get a little older.
And like I said in the beginning, this girl is growing fast. She has pretty good head control and it’s only a matter of time before she starts crawling. Although with the force she kicks, I can tell she wants to run! Check out this video that I took last week!
A couple weeks ago, we weren’t so sure. Her initial visit with the doctor was good and I was even commended for doing a great job feeding her since she was growing so well. But then the nurse administered her first round of vaccines. First we fed Ashni her initial dose of the 3 dose oral rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq. I was unhappy with the ingredient profile – after being so cautious to limit artificial ingredients and preservatives in my own diet to produce cleaner milk, it felt ridiculous to feed her those kinds of things directly. But I had gone back and forth for a really long time and finally decided to go ahead with it. Next, she got her first DTaP shot, Sanofi’s Daptacel. This one made us both unhappy. Poor Ashni screamed when the needle went in her thigh and I had to nurse her for quite awhile before her pained crying subsided. Because whooping cough has made a resurgence in Austin and can be fatal for infants, I had convinced myself that it was worth it for her to be vaccinated against it. But it was a very tough decision. The more I researched things, the more I felt stuck between a rock and a hard place. I read The Vaccine Book by Dr. Sears which goes into detail about vaccine ingredients, side effects, and the diseases they are meant to protect against. Turns out that DTaP has aluminum in it, and when aluminum accumulates in the body, it can lead to a number of different neurological problems and other chronic illnesses. And the rotavirus vaccine contains live disease causing germs that can appear in baby’s stools for up to 15 days.
Well, Ashni did not seem herself after her vaccines. She was excessively tired and not eating much. Also, she got extremely colicky at nighttime – every evening around dinnertime, she would cry inconsolably. It really scared me, but I kept feeding her as much as she’d let me and we waited it out. She eventually started eating more and became less fatigued, but she still continued to cry for a couple hours each night after that. Ashni is generally a good tempered baby and it’s obvious that her nighttime cries are a result of pain. In fact, a movie that every parent of a newborn should watch is Dunstan’s Baby Language – it goes into detail about how a baby’s cry sounds can be interpreted to tell you what the baby needs: “Eh” = burp me, “neh” = feed me, “heh” = physical discomfort (wet diaper/hot/cold/etc), “airh” = lower gas pain, “ow” = tired. Most of Ashni’s evening cries involve “eh” and “airh,” but there’s also a distinctive pain sound that started after her first round of vaccines. I sometimes wonder if her tummy hurts from a mild case of rotavirus or something but there’s really no telling.
I hate having to gamble with the health of my baby, and now I completely understand why some parents choose not to vaccinate. In an effort to possibly prevent one illness, other unintentional harm can be caused. So do you risk the disease or risk the known and unknown side effects of the vaccine? No matter what you do, you’re taking a chance with your child’s health, and it’s not a fun position to be in. Instead of obsessing over vaccines, why don’t people talk more about how to improve immune health and decrease exposure to disease causing agents? This would involve consuming natural antibodies in mother’s milk and keeping away from daycares or other places where sick kids congregate. Unfortunately these measures are very difficult to live by in American culture. With the pressure to return to work soon after giving birth, many mothers have no choice. And milk supply decreases when a mother is put under more stress or when she nurses her baby less frequently. It seems crazy to me that mothers are so often encouraged to be apart from their infants when the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends feeding a baby only breast milk for the first 6 months of its life, and continuing breastfeeding until the child is at least one year old, if not longer.
I’ll do my best to give Ashni a good start, but there’s no telling what will happen. And in terms of her future vaccinations, I still don’t have my mind made up on what to do. My original plan was to follow Dr. Sears’ selective schedule, but now I’m leaning towards waiting for her to get a little older.
And like I said in the beginning, this girl is growing fast. She has pretty good head control and it’s only a matter of time before she starts crawling. Although with the force she kicks, I can tell she wants to run! Check out this video that I took last week!
