As promised... about vaccinations.
OK. I'm not sure how this will play out, because I know I'm treading down the path of breast/formula, circed/un-circed, cry-it-out/co-sleeping battles. I know it. Now, then. In the interest of full disclosure, we co-sleep. Noel is not circumsised. We use cloth diapers. Obviously, he's breastfed, given the dairy issues I've mentioned before (and, as an aside? I get to eat cheese again! Enzymes for the mom plus probiotics for the kid= back to normal poop. Go figure). Yep, we're like that around here. It works for us. My very best friend thinks we've lost our marbles. She was a cry-it-out-er, formula feeding, disposable diapering kind of mom to her daughter. She's still my best friend. Her kid is great. Worked for her.
So. I'm not trying to start a war. This is what we do. If you don't do what we do, I don't really care. I'm not going to say you're neglecting your kid because formula is so inferior to breastmilk. I don't think that circumcision is abuse. There are people who are militant about anything, pro or con. Let's not go there, ok? Now, on to the vaccine talk.
We don't discuss this with people we know in person. We have done our research, talked to our pediatrician, and made our decision. It is not up for conversation, because I know that it will likely lead to an argument, or us being looked at as if we are negligent. We are not. My husband's grandparents looked at me as if I was truly around the bend when I was asked how Noel took his shots, and I said he hadn't. No shots? Did I want him to DIE? Clearly, not an incident I want to repeat.
To begin with, long before I did any other reading or had any opinion about any other vaccine I knew we would decline the Hep B shot at birth. Why would you vaccinate a newborn for a virus that is
transmitted by sex or needles? I swear, if I can't keep Noel from sharing his works with every junkie on the block or stop him from having unprotected sex with hookers at 6 months old, obviously I am an unfit mother. That's where it started for me. I thought that perhaps we would add the Hep B shot in later, if it was necessary. Further reading on it had me deciding to delay that one longer and longer, until it seemed like a non-issue.
At this point we met with our pedi for the first time, prenatally. He asked us how we felt about vaccines in general, and we mentioned delaying Hep B. He explained that he was on board with us selectively, delayed, or non-vaccinating, as long as we knew WHY we were doing it. I started reading. First I read Stephanie Cave's book,
What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Children's Vaccinations on our pedi's suggestion.
After that, I started researching each disease and deciding which ones we needed protecting against. Some were easy. Chicken pox? Skip it. HiB?
Skip it. Tetanus?
Skip it. (seriously, read more about tetanus. It's SO not a scary one to me now.
Here's some
more, OK?)
Anyway. There are lots of reasons we decided not to vaccinate. In no particular order:
the risks Disease vs. Vaccine- or, 'how likely are we to come across this disease in our day to day life, and what would we do if we got it?'.
the additives. Read the inserts, and it's not just about the thimerosal.
developing immune system Immune systems are not complete until about age 2. If we choose to vaccinate, we will start then.
there is a trust issue, no? Liar, liar! After approving such favorites as Vioxx, Bextra, and Celebrex, I'm supposed to trust the FDA? Or the manufacturers that knew those drugs had some problems, but covered it up? Merck makes vaccines, too.
Now that I've outed myself as a certifiable fruit, I'll wait for the firestorm.
Shameless.
Go say my kid is the cutest. The voting thing is odd- he's on the second row in the middle. Here's the picture that was submitted (through the studio where his most recent portraits were shot).
Also, he's still teething. He started with the drooling and chewing on everything a couple of weeks ago. On a closer inspection of his mouth, there were white spots in the middle of his bottom jaw- regular first teeth. As of yesterday, maybe the day before... two OTHER spots are swollen and inflamed. Is he really going to cut four bottom teeth at once? Maybe that's why he's sucking hickeys on my shoulder (yes, really).
His highness won't nap, won't play alone, and is wicked cranky. I hate teething.
And we all lived happily ever after...
After that last entry, we all need something more fun, no?
OK, how about this? At 30, relatively healthy, no previous issues, I think I might be arthritic. WooHoo, right? I've been waking up for the past several weeks with sore fingers. After I wiggle them a bit it's better. This morning, though, after the husband stole the covers again I made an attempt at stealing them back. Half asleep. Woke up real quick, though, when my poor fingers were MAJOR OUCHIE.
This is so not cool. I'm calling a doctor Monday.
Hmm. I guess that wasn't fun, after all.
How about this? I'm going back to school! Well, I'm taking a class. A photo class, one with Film! and Darkroom! I figured that just because pre-Noel I got paid for it doesn't mean I can't go back to the beginning- a photo as fine arts class sounded like fun. Besides, it's been a while since I had someone critique my work. Hey, I'm excited about it. And so is the husband, because it's on the same night as his old poker game. Insert gramma-babysitter, and it's a night out. Kinda. I sure hope my old-lady arthritis takes a hike.
Six months later...
It's been roughly six months since we got the diagnosis of Down syndrome. It's been exactly six months and one week- I got the call on February 1st, early in the afternoon. 2ish. I was standing in the kitchen, and the caller ID said the name of the peri group we were seeing. I did not expect to hear so soon and did not expect for the news to be what it was. Of all the things about this pregnancy I remember with breathtaking accuracy, this is the clearest.
I also remember the second beta phone call- the first was a formality, as I had already peed on so many test sticks; the second, though, that was the winner. The one where we found out if the numbers were going up. I was at the mall, not able to be at home, unable to be still. I was standing in front of Victoria's Secret. I saved all the text messages in my phone that I sent to T with the steadily increasing beta levels. That was almost a year ago, though. See? I have good things, too. I remember the first time I felt the baby move, laying in bed. It felt like popcorn popping.
But,
Six Months Ago.
I got the phone call. I called my best friend first. I couldn't call my husband yet. She cried with me, I talked to her in a daze. After a few minutes, I had to call T. He needed to know. Not telling him wouldn't make it any less real. This is something that I found to stick in my head, irrationally. Every time we would tell someone, it felt more real, and I hated it. Every time we broke the news- to my in laws, to my dad, to anyone... it was like the telling made it more true. Our baby wasn't what we thought. Our baby was different, abnormal. Maybe sick. Maybe needing surgery. Maybe in the NICU. Maybe, maybe, maybe. We knew nothing, really. Nothing of consequence. Just one thing: our baby was already not what we expected.
After I called T, he came straight home from work. I still feel bad about telling him while he was there- about having him have to explain why he was leaving in such a hurry. I couldn't wait. I couldn't sit on the news while I tried to will a black hole into existance to swallow me up whole. By the way, that won't work. No matter how focused you think you are, it's not enough.
That day we sat on the couch, a tangle of arms and legs and two heads, dripping tears. The dogs flanked us, confused. We had ice cream for dinner, because it was the first thing that came out of the freezer. At some point we went to bed, but I did not sleep.
I did not sleep for a few nights, but the first one was bad. The baby (we still did not know the sex, although we would find out within a couple of weeks) got hiccups. The baby that I had been trying to ignore was very obviously there. Every half second, there it was. Bump. Bump. Bump. Bump. In addition to not being able to create a black hole, I cannot will a baby to stop hiccuping. I tried really, really hard.
I cried because I did not want to know about the baby that I had anymore. Not right that minute. Anytime, baby, I thought, anytime but now. Tears running down the sides of my face, I begged. Please, just stop. Stop. I fell asleep sometime after that for a few minutes, and when I woke, all was still again in the darkness.
Every day after that got better. Slowly. Some days it did not feel better. Some days felt worse than the day before, but none were as bad as that first one. Today I feel like that was an eternity ago. I'm not to the place where an entire day will go by without a thought about Down syndrome, but the thoughts that I have are not bad. I'm not hopeless, not at all.
I bring it up because I'm noticing a lot of hits here from searches for soft markers, for bad triple screen results, stuff like that. And to those people, I say this: 799 times out of 800, there isn't a problem. Don't freak out. Really, I promise. And if you turn out to be the one to hit the one-in-eight hundred (those are the odds, right?), it doesn't suck forever. Shoud you find yourself in that place, know that it gets better, and at the beginning, nobody is thrilled about the surprise. So don't feel bad for you know, whatever.
You make it back to fine again.
Pinky-swear.
