keep your Mumps to yourself

Well we've successfully navigated our way through yet another doctors appointment and were thrilled to hear how great our little girl is doing.  She's a solid little chick, weighting in at 28lbs and stretching 34 inches!  G's in the 95th percentile across the board and is moving through her second year swimmingly.  I wish I could report that Grace took the visit to the Doc like a champ, but I would be lying.  Let me put it this way.  Grace almost successfully strangled the doctor with her own stethoscope! Without going into anymore detail - we were thrilled to get in and out of there in under an hour...VACCINATION FREE!

We went in expecting a couple of boosters and a chicken pox vaccine, but were pleasantly surprised when we realized Grace is caught up until she is 2!  Lots of parents these days are seriously anti-vaccine (hey! thanks for bringing back measles, folks!), but we definitely aren't on that train.  It seems like a lot of people have come to fear the vaccine more than they have the illness they are preventing.  I'm well aware of the disproved autism theory and have read mountains of paperwork on the possible side effects. Having personally heard the story of my Mom's experience with measles as a child, I'm going to stick with the shots.  But hey, it's a personal decision, right?


More and more cases of measles are popping up here in Michigan, and Pertussis is back in full effect too.  Being a fully vaccinated 20-something, I haven't had the pleasure of experiencing a seriously devastating (currently avoidable) epidemic like that of the 1950's Polio outbreak.  From what I gather statistically, Polio wasn't a walk in that park and took many, many lives.   Call me crazy, but eradicating this disease via vaccination seems like a pretty okay idea.


I fear that by the time Grace is school aged, the days of the "check your kid for lice" letters being sent home by administration will be replaced by "Mumps outbreak" bulletins.  It seems a shame that something that could  be prevented, has the possibility of making such a devastating comeback.  


Like I said, each of us as parents has a choice on how we'd like to raise our kids. For Ryan and I, we couldn't live with ourselves if we felt like we weren't doing everything in our power to protect our little girl.  I understand the thought behind raising children naturally and avoiding unnecessary medical treatment, but skipping out on vaccinations that have helped to keep my generation and my parent's generation well, seems a little bit ignorant. But to each their own.