For Anyone Who Does or Does Not Vaccinate His or Her Children September 25, 2007

Jack has received 1 vaccine (3 shots), for Hib, a type of meningitis. If he gets any further shots, it will only be after age 2. I want to do a proper post about the vaccine issue, and why we do not vaccinate. Today, a great article about an ad in USA Today appeared. I highly recommend reading the article:
http://www.rescuepost.com/rescue_post/2007/09/america-meet-ou.html
You can also see the ad:
http://www.generationrescue.org/pdf/070626.pdf

I don’t know if vaccines cause, or help exacerbate, autism. I do know that auto-immune diseases have increased at the same time that the number of vaccines has increased. I do know that there are ingredients in vaccines that I don’t want in my house, let alone in my child. I do know that by age 2, a child whose parents follow the current vaccination schedule will have over 32 vaccinations. At age 2 months, babies are injected with at least diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, Hib, polio, PCV, and Hepatitis B. Along with those diseases comes: aluminum (x3), formaldehyde(x2), phenoxyethanol (x2), glutaraldehyde, ammonium sulfate (x3), yeast(x2), thimerosal (x2, you thought it was gone, didn’t you?, nope, just decreased), various antibiotics, soy protein, gelatin, and monkey kidney cells.

Some babies are injected with even more stuff, like the Hepatitis A vaccine, or a new rotavirus vaccine. It’s new because the last one killed more children in its brief appearance than the actual rotavirus does in several years. The flu vaccine still openly contains thimerosal, and is grown in chicken embryos. When we add in Hepatitis A, rotavirus, MMR and chicken pox, we’re also adding material from aborted fetuses.

So, a 2 month old baby’s immune system now has to fend off at least SEVEN diseases, plus find a way to deal with all the excess chemicals, which are not innocuous. Even antibiotics are potential allergens, as are some of the other ingredients. You may say that having the diseases injected in vaccines is not the same as being exposed to all those diseases in “the wild.” You’d be right. These diseases are being injected into a baby’s bloodstream, bypassing the respiratory system which is generally the first line of defense against germs.

I don’t know that vaccines cause more problems than they solve. Nobody does. That’s because the CDC and the Federal government will not conduct a study comparing vaccinated kids to unvaccinated kids. They say it’s because the unvaccinated kids would miss out on the benefits of vaccination, and possibly die. However, children do die due to vaccine-related causes. We also don’t know what’s behind the increases in asthma, severe allergies, rheumatoid arthritis in children, diabetes, epilepsy, autism, and several other neurological and auto-immune diseases. I, for one, want to see a study. So does House Representative Carolyn Maloney, D-FL. If you think that we need to make sure that vaccines aren’t causing health problems in our children, or even if you want to show all the vaccine doubters that you’re right and vaccines are the greatest invention ever, take a look at her proposal, and ask your Congress-person to support such a study.

General Update September 12, 2007

I’ve been using digital scrapping software to create pages, including an entire custom storybook for Jack.

Business and Mom…
I’m lucky if I get 18 hours of work done in a week. I have no idea how I’m supposed to work with a child. I can’t plunk him down in front of TV – not that I’d want to do that anyway, but it’s just not an option. Multi-tasking is all well and good, but when you have a kid pushing at you saying “pick up Mommy pick up” (he means “stand up”) or putting his stuffed animals in the water table, multi-tasking isn’t what you need.
I said to Max a few days ago: My job is to be Jack’s mom. That’s why I’m here. When Jack is awake, I need to be with him. That has to be my first priority. That means that business comes second and anything else comes third, fourth, etc. I have a baby-sitter but she has been rather flakey the last 2 weeks. Even at $5/hour, we can only afford her for a couple of hours a day, a couple of days a week.

Mom…
Jack, is, of course, the smartest boy in the world. Until I met sm00bs, I thought he must be the smartest child, but her daughter has more signs and words than Jack, so I’ll just have to qualify the statement with boy. He speaks sentences. Newer words include helicopter, I love you, I like X (where X is puppy, doggie, star, etc.), star, everybody, great-grandma, starlight/starbright. New signs are doll, water, and mouse. He’s getting more into signing now, but we can’t always tell what he’s signing, esp. since so many of the signs are similar. He signs “Signing Time.” Our TiVo just deleted our Signing Time stash, which Max unhappily said was a sign to buy the entire 13 DVD, 4 CD set. With shipping and tax it’s $202. A steal yes, but hardly cheap.

Jack also sings. Here are excerpts:

“e-f-p-nnnnnn-p”
“e-i-e-i-o”
“row row row boat… stream… maymaymaymay…”
“donny… sprites… donny… sprites”

He is very much into letters and numbers. Before his grandma came to visit, he could count 1-2-3. Now, he counts 3-4-5. Sometimes he remembers 1 and 2. I put some alphabet window clings on the office window and he loves to look at them, un-stick and re-stick them, and to look out the window.

Jack can also recognize many books by their covers, and also asks for books by name. His favorites are “Peef” (Peef The Christmas Bear), “Elmo”, “Chick-Chick-Boom-Boom”, “Chick-Chick 3″, “Hop Hop” (Pat the Bunny), and “Mimi”. A friend bought him a book that is also an Elmo puppet. The book is really the song “If You’re Happy and You Know It”, which is now known as the “Elmo song”. Everytime he sees Elmo in a store, or really anywhere, he exclaims Elmo Elmo! Do they put subliminal messages in these things? Narcotics? I don’t think it’s lead-based.

Speaking of lead-based, OY! I’m now going out of the way to not buy toys from China (so hard to do!). Also, we’ve gotten – OK Max installed – a reverse-osmosis water filter to take out the fluoride. And I’m hoping to get Jack off the bottle sooner rather than later because his bottles are made with plastic that leaches not-so-good chemicals into the fluid. We’re using gDiapers, a cloth/disposable hybrid that is much better for the environment than disposables (and 12 cents per diaper more expensive, but they’re so cute!). I need to post about all the green, granola stuff I’ve been moved to do since becoming a gDiaper parent. I’m driving Max nuts, I know, but so far I haven’t insisted on eating only food grown within 20 miles or only buying organic everything.

Today, Jack played with sidewalk chalk (or “Cray” as he calls it, for crayons) and loved it! He has a water table with rocks and water, but it used to have seeds, so he calls it “sees and wawer”. He started trying to brush his teeth seriously in the past few days. That’s a battle! I could post about that too. I wonder if it would be as boring as this probably is. If you read to the end, you should put a comment as to why. This is very long.