So it begins…
Am I the only one who finds it slightly humorous that we have a chickenpox vaccine?
OK, now before you yell at me about the extreme chickenpox cases, I am not trying to make light of those who have suffered severe illness, or death, I will address those, but I am talking about the majority of the people.
I believe most parents have their children’s best interest at heart. I hate hearing parents, whether they vaccinate or not, talk about how parents who choose to do the opposite don’t care about their children and/or that they are bad parents. I wish we could all agree that we are doing what we think is best for our children and that we love them deeply.
Having said that, my goal is not to belittle, or bad-mouth anyone for their decisions, but rather to educate people. I want parents to know they have choices. I want parents to think about and research the things they do instead of just blindly listening to the majority, or assuming the doctor is always right.
Doctors are quite educated, and they are very helpful in a lot of areas, but sometimes they are so caught up in the science that both the doctor and the parents forget about the body’s natural immune system. We forget we were created to take in and overcome a lot. We forget that our body needs to know how to naturally fight off infections. God created us that way for a reason.
Now, I do agree that many, many years ago people were terribly sick and in need of major medical attention, but they were also in need of clean water and soap. Things are much more sanitary now than they were then. Many of those diseases and illnesses no longer exist because we have become more clean and, in part, some vaccines were created.
Have you noticed the incline in vaccines over the years? Have you thought about how they are affecting our children? What are the true side effects? How well are they tested? And I don’t mean to prevent the infections, but tested for the long-term effects, or the additional things our children may suffer instead?
OK, OK, so I jumped WAY ahead of what I was really going to focus on during this post! I have much more to say about vaccinations in general, but my focus here was supposed to be about chickenpox 
. This is probably one of the few vaccines that prevents an infection that most of us have had, and survived just fine.
Did you know that even if you choose to vaccinate your child, you can still say no to some of the vaccines? You could do all the vaccinations and not give them the chickenpox vaccine. Why would you do that?
- The vaccination has only been in the US since 1995 and was first released in 1988 in Japan. We don’t know the long-term effects.
- Back in the day, when we all got chickenpox naturally, there were around 4,000,000 cases each year, with around 100 to 150 deaths. That is 0.00375% resulted in deaths. About 80% of those were adults. (Maybe the chickenpox parties weren’t such a bad idea after all
.) This is not to minimize the deaths, but to put everything into perspective. Does the risk of death outweigh the risk of the vaccine? - To allow your child to build up a life-long, natural immunity to this illness. It can be much worse to get as an adult, and the immunity from the vaccine may not last that long. In fact, you have to give the shot twice as they are children, and then they still can get it.
So before you say” just wait until your child gets it,” Conner currently has chickenpox. Despite the many shocked looks I’ve received from young mothers, older mothers looked at me and told me stories of what their children went through. They weren’t horrifying stories. They were simple stories of resting for a week, oatmeal baths, caladryl, and Tylenol (NEVER aspirin).
We noticed Conner’s spots on Sunday, 3 days ago, but I am sure he was probably lightly spotting before then. He’s a boy with bumps and bruises, so we didn’t notice until they were covering his back. James has had shingles for the last 3 or 4 weeks, but they were just about dried up and gone. We thought we had dodged the kids getting chickenpox just yet, although we weren’t sure how they would get them since everyone is getting vaccinated now, but apparently not.
Conner has been such a strong little boy. He hasn’t really had a fever, and he doesn’t scratch too much. Every once in a while he complains his back is hurting, and he has cried a few brief tears of pain, but overall he’s still jumping all over everything. He does stop and lay down more. He’s watching a lot of movies right now and resting. I am glad it hasn’t been severe at all. I do wonder if the severity has anything to do with the immunity. Will he still have a strong, life-long immunity built up against chickenpox?
Elias has not shown any signs yet, but I have heard and read lots of stories about it taking a week to appear in others at times. We shall see this next week.
I have much more to say about vaccinations, and have several people I would like to guest post for me on the topic. Please keep all comments kind. I am not opposed to opposition, but do not want bad-mouthing or name calling to be a part of the discussion. I will delete inappropriate comments.
What are your thoughts on the CHICKENPOX vaccine?
