Visit to the pediatrician - WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 2008

We took Daniel to the pediatrician yesterday.


Length: 23 inches - 85th percentile
Head Circumference - 16.5 inches - 85th percentile
Weight - 15lbs, 5oz - OVER 100th percentile!!




I had really been freaked out about this particular appointment because we've been thinking a lot about vaccines and what we did/did not feel good about for our son. At first, we took what we thought was a pretty moderate position. We wanted to get Daniel all the usual vaccines, but we wanted to get them spaced out more than they are normally spaced out, and we wanted to get them when Daniel was a little older. This seemed like the best designed approach for him because we are not putting Daniel in daycare so it seemed to us that his exposure to any of the diseases for which they vaccinate would likely be quite unlikely.




However, Rhett and I realized a couple of weeks ago that actually, we aren't able to keep Daniel's exposure risk as low as we initially wanted it to be. We have both returned to work, and while we often work from home, we also attend meetings at various social service agencies and at our own offices in Durham and Pittsboro, and Daniel sometimes comes with us to these things. We need to be able to bring him with us because if we didn't, we'd have to hire commercial childcare, and that's neither in our parenting philosophy nor budget right now. So, we had to reassess our risk. When Rhett worked at DSS he worked with the same population with which we are both working now, and he found that without exception, the kids were behind on vaccines. They also often came from families with poor hygiene and frequent illness. We concluded that in order to protect our son from the diseases to which he is actually likely to be exposed, we needed to get some vaccines. 




We discussed our fears with a WONDERFUL pediatrician who isn't Daniel's doctor only because he works about 1 hr. away, and we settled on the vaccines for his 9 weeks well-baby check. I can't remember which ones they were, but they were the basics. We just opted out of the optional ones. There were three injections, which they gave all at once. I had dosed up the Daniel with Infant Tylenol before the shots and also gave him a glucose solution in a bottle a few minutes before. He handled the shots way better than I thought he would, and was clearly over it about 2 minutes after they were over. Geez. I'm glad that's over. It was really scary because even though I understand that the vaccines/autism link is questionable, I prefer to err on the side of avoidance. But this time, avoidance couldn't mean avoidance of risk. So hard. I guess this is the way it will always be. So hard, so hard.


1 COMMENTS:
Anna said...
I was so glad you returned to blogging about the PunkieFamily!!!
APRIL 18, 2008 3:32 PM