According to the CDC website: "Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) disease is a bacterial disease that usually strikes children under 5 years old. Before Hib vaccine, Hib disease was the leading cause of bacterial meningitis among children under 5 years old in the United States. Meningitis is an infection of the brain and spinal cord coverings, which can lead to lasting brain damage and deafness. Hib disease can also cause: pneumonia, severe swelling in the throat, infections of the blood, joints, bones, and covering of the heart, and death. Before Hib vaccine, about 20,000 children in the United States under 5 years old got severe Hib disease each year and nearly 1,000 people died."
"Infection with pneumococcal disease is responsible for about 200 deaths each year among children under 5 years old. It is the leading cause of bacterial meningitis in the United States. Before a vaccine was available, each year pneumococcal infection caused over 700 cases of meningitis, 13,000 blood infections, and about 5 million ear infections. It can also lead to other health problems, including: pneumonia, deafness, and brain damage."
The shots were not fun for anybody. It's very sad to take a perfectly happy baby and poke him in both thighs with needles and make him cry, especially since he's perfectly willing to cry without provocation any old damn time. But he did get two more cool Peanuts Characters (TM) in Space Band-Aids (TM).
The vaccines don't stop here by a long "shot" (sorry). Here's the full slate, approved by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (www.cdc.gov/vaccines/recs/acip), the American Academy of Pediatrics (http://www.aap.org), and the American Academy of Family Physicians (http://www.aafp.org).
Again, we are taking a slower approach (if he gets 4 at once and has a bad reaction, how do we know which one was the cause?). Thus far we are following the Dr. Sears alternative schedule, which gets the kid fully immunized but spreads things out a little:
2 months - DTaP, Rotavirus
3 months - PC, Hib
4 months - DTaP, Rotavirus
5 months - PC, Hib
6 months - DTaP, Rotavirus
7 months - PC, Hib
9 months - polio, flu (2 doses)
12 months - mumps, polio
15 months - Pc, Hib
18 months - DTaP, chickenpox
21 months - flu
2 years - rubella, polio
2 years, 6 months - Hep B, Hep A
3 years - Hep B, measles, flu
3 years, 6 months - Hep B, Hep A
4 years - DTaP, polio, flu
5 years - MMR, flu
6 years - chickenpox
If we put him in daycare next year, where he'll be exposed to all those other dirty children from god knows where infected with god knows what, we might speed things up a bit.
The nurse wasn't going to weight him, just give him the shots. But charting his stats is just about the most fun thing about having a baby (ok, not really), so we insisted. Here goes:
Weight: 14 lbs.
Length: 25 in.
Here is a 14 lb. turkey for comparison:
He had a little bit of a mild reaction to the shots. He lost his appetite for a while, and may have had a slight fever. This morning he was very fussy and wouldn't sleep much. But a nice warm bath and then a warm towel seemed to help make his day a little brighter. Isn't that true for all of us?
Grandpa Chadwick says: He is now at 10% of his HS Freshman weight! (Or at least that was mine.) Your shot list reminds me fondly of my first few weeks at Navy Officer's Candidate School. We got four (4) shots a week, on Monday morning, two in each arm. We all had to get all sixteen shots, because that early in the class, we had no idea what orders we would get, so they immunized us for EVERYthing. Germs would spontaneously die as we walked past. But our arms hurt all the time for 4 weeks. And I was never exposed to things like Typhus, Malaria, etc. I still have my shot record, and my arms hurt when I even look at it!
ReplyDeleteHang in their Spud - it's better than getting sick!
Love,
Grandpa C.