BABY: Immunizations

or yes, I may just be a bad mommy after all (though Finn generally says I’m not)

So Maddox had his 12 mo check up last Wednesday and he has had an awful reaction to his shots. Awful, miserable and far worse than I expected. And I feel like an awful mommy because I knew in the recesses of my brain that I should have done his shots differently. His 2 older brothers were (are) huge- giants that never even noticed that they were getting shots. They never really had and reaction other than being a bit tired the next day and sometimes not even that. We then lived in walking distance to the pediatrician and I took them to every appointment, so I always knew which shots they were getting, what to expect and was ready to breastfeed away any screaming and pain, though there really never was much, if any fuss. Big, fat, mega chubby legs apparently mean the shot doesn’t hurt as much and the reaction is much less likely.

Maddox is super skinny. I knew that Finn and Grae were huge, but when I look at pictures now, I can’t believe how huge. They look like they were pumped up with an air pump. People always remarked on how fat their chunky calves were and how they must be breastfed babies because they were so big. I also had several people think I was their nanny or ask where I adopted them from. They are huge. I’m not, though we all three have the same big, fat head. Maddox, normal head, skinny body, easy to carry has been a big change and I just don’t always think of things that I should after having 2 big hulking boys ahead of him. Plus I’m apparently always pregnant and exhausted, so have significant loss of mental faculties (I’m now very stupid and forgetful). Plus I no longer take them to their appointments, their daddy does. So I don’t keep track of what’s when. And unlike Finn who nursed until 22 mo, Maddox quit at 11 mo (mommy pregnant, complete placenta previa, nursing not as interesting as big brothers and playing) and went to his appointment with a bottle of formula (another of my mommy failings, but he loves it, so what can you do) in case he needed comfort that mommy wouldn’t be there to provide (as I said he loves it, so it would mean more to him than me at that moment and apparently it did the job at the moment).

But when he got home he threw himself at me and has been glued to me or his daddy for a full week, night and day. His mood has been awful, way beyond his usual crotchety old man grumpiness. The terror at the speed of a bullet has been carried pretty much everywhere for a full week and has spent his nights in the rocker with daddy or on me in bed tossing and turning and getting pissed off when I’m cutting into his space (hard not to do when you’re 27 weeks pregnant). And he’s had fevers, really bad for the first few days, and now is covered head to toe in a rash. And he cries. My usually happy little boy, who does have quite a temper and can be a bit grumpy, is crying, real, big tears much of the day and night. He had the MMR and the Chickenpox and Hep A, (luckily they ran out of the flu shots). All at once, in doses that are big enough for his brothers though he’s about half their size. And I knew this was not ok. And I meant to do something about it. I had just read the Jenny McCarthy article in Cookie, I had all of that in my mind, but I was thinking about the fact Grae at 27 mo is not talking very much while Finn was having full conversations way before he was 2 and I was thinking about baby 4 and her situation and needing to change doctors at 27 weeks so we can have a hospital with a NICU, just in case, and I was thinking it was coming up, but later in a few months when I could think about it or I wasn’t thinking, I guess, mostly about Maddox.

We do shots. I never really thought about not doing them, other than skipping flu shots when we can. I glanced at things about splitting up and delayed schedules, but because the shots had so little visible impact on the first 2, I didn’t really think about it. Until I read the article in Cookie. But I was more thinking about Grae when I really should have been thinking about Maddox, who was about to get the worst possible shot combination for his little body. So I’m now working on what to do from this point forward, what we need to do for him (and for his sister depending on how big she pops out)- delay until his body is a bit bigger, closer in weight that his brothers were at for each shot, spread things out a bit more.

I did actually read about immunizations - both for and against- before Finn had his first shots and I did decide to go ahead, but I do now believe that it shouldn’t be a question of all or nothing, but adaptability to each child. We have, possibly slowly realized, that Maddox is very different from his brothers in ways that we just didn’t think of. He is a very different baby, more different from his brothers than they are to each other. He actually wears the size for his age or smaller, unlike his brothers who are often 2-3 sizes ahead. He is a to some extent a formula and bottle baby while his brothers never had formula and Grae never even had a bottle. We had to put him in pampers while he was learning to sit up because he’s so long and skinny that he just couldn’t get past the cloth diapers. He’s back in them now because every other combination of every other sort of diaper we have tried, cloth and disposable, gives him a horrid rash all of the sudden. We obviously know that he gets a different does of tylenol than his brother do now and an even smaller does than they did when they were 1. I just wish I had been quicker to put it together that maybe he also needed something different for his shots too. The schedule is a guideline, not an absolute rule, and the doses are set to cover most children, not necessarily all children. I am not a doctor and I have tons more research to do before I know what I will do, but it seems logical to me that different children may need an adjusted approach, like our super skinny, very sensitive child, to many things including their shots. So my opinion is now, talk to your doctor and if you have concerns that your doctor can’t address, find another doctor. Read what you can find (Dr Sears has an alternative schedule and a book on vaccines, his site has lots of information http://www.askdrsears.com/thevaccinebook/index.asp) , talk to people, think about what else you see in your child that might indicate a need for a change and then decide what to do.