Well this is what you wanted

Peanut has been diagnosed with chicken pox. On the inside I have a big gloating smile and am jumping for joy...yeah you read that right. See I didn't vaccinate for chicken pox, this was the outcome I was hoping for. Before you send of your vitriolic angry e-mails about how I'm making your kids sick (I have gotten them before!) you should hear me out.

I am not anti vaccine. I am anti so many vaccines. My kids are up to date for all their vaccines. Except Varicella (chicken pox). I was a health care worker in my pre-mom life. I did my research and am confident in my decisions. I did a lot of research and came to be decision in an informed way. I actually read many of the CDC and FDA reports (The scientific ones with all the hard to follow language). There is a lot of information out there, I could list 100+ links of things that I read and researched. But I'm not going to. I am not trying to preach or convince anyone on what they should or shouldn't do. This was the choice for my family and my family only. I can direct you to sites if you want to e-mail me personally.

My reason for not vaccinating are:

1. It's chicken pox, it's not deadly or life threatening. There are only 100 reported deaths in 4million cases, if my math is right that is a 0.0025% mortality rate. In contrast the CDC estimates that 36,000 people die from influenza virus each year. This site quotes research that suggest the flu is more deadly to children than chicken pox, measles and whopping cough COMBINED!
   

2. My husband and I had it and survived (not the best reason, but one none the less)
   

3. It doesn't work.

   1. That's right after the first 5 years of the program they were seeing the same number of cases, not a decrease. the difference was instead of seeing it in toddler hood....they were seeing it in school age children. The reasoning they suspect was two fold. Not enough people getting the vaccine and the vaccine not being effective for more than 5 years.

4. Public healthy policy should not be decided by business.

   1. I read the actual report that quoted the above stats and recommended adding a second dose and the number 2 reason they gave (2 not 6, not a finally, number2) was that parents would have to miss work. (Note: I checked my link and tried diligently to find this again and it has been "removed" from the FDA site or they killed the link) Now I know that for some people this would be horribly detrimental to their livelihood and therefore the health and safety of the kids...they could still choose to vaccinate, I shouldn't be forced to do it for their benefit.

5. It's made from aborted fetuses

6. Chicken pox and shingles are much harder to deal with as teens and adults and studies are showing an outbreak of both on college campuses. Note: The disease is milder a effects children under age 5. the older you are when you get it (I was 8-9) the worse it is.

7. The result of a vaccine program on society should make us healthier not cause us to have to vaccinate more...the chicken pox vaccine requires 2 shots and now they are recommending shingles vaccines which is one to two more. We already give our kids 48 doses of 14 vaccines by age 6 (source) Julie Deardorff put its nicely:

   So we now have to buy a shingles vaccine to control a shingles epidemic started by a chickenpox vaccine, which the state (IL) health board said didn’t need to be mandatory in the first place, but then required it anyway.

   (she has some great information and sources for vaccine info on her blog).

Why am I sharing all this? Am I trying to loose my friends? No, it's a segue (albeit a long one) to the second part of this post.

My husband agreed with, when presented all the facts and left it to my discretion. Not without wavering. When the preschool we were sending our Monkey too (public) had a DCFS visit and they started pushing me and questioning me he said “we should just vaccinate and this will go away”. I didn't waver. I presented the facts and they let him stay. But now that his baby Peanut has it...he is questioning me again...”Well are you happy?” snarling slightly “this is what you wanted”. He is convinced that our next two weeks will suck and it will be the worst thing we, correct that I, ever did to our kids. And that our doctor and everyone in his office hates us (we were shuttled right into a non-regular room and not allowed to be in the waiting room yesterday). I reminded him that I told him if HE wanted to vaccinate HE could take them to the doctor and hold them down while the screamed and cried but that I would not go with him and I would not participate...he didn't.

By the end of the evening he relented and admitted that after reading everything (again) that it's not that bad, and as long as we can still go on vacation (ahh the truth come out!) and Monkey doesn't miss the start of school all will be well. He also came to my defense as I was worrying and wondering. What would all the parents I need to notify think? Would I loose all my friends? Would I be marked with a scarlet V for not vaccinating. He reminded me that it was probably one of their recently vaccinated (they can pass the virus on after being vaccinated) that gave her the chicken pox in the first place.

But that's how co-parenting is supposed to work we give a little on some issuses we don't budge on others and we come to a decision as a team and do what's best for our children.We than stick to it and defend each other against outside attacks. We are always a united force.

I do feel a little bad that they will miss the last of summer and be cooped up with movies and games but I missed things too and I turned out okay. We will bake cookies, we will do crafts, we will cuddle lots and lots and in my heart I know they are healthier and better off because of it. If I am proved wrong down the road I will gladly eat my humble pie and admit it. But for now, I have to go re apply some calamine lotion and get some toddlers to stop itching.