I promised myself I would not start another blog post talking about how long it’s been since my last post. So. This is me NOT talking about my gross negligence as a blogger-wanna-be. 😛

DaMan and I spent a lot of time talking. Not nearly as much these days as in times past. We used to work together in the same house/space/office all day long in the early days of Beeyoutiful. This provided ample opportunity to talk through anything and everything. These days Beeyoutiful has it’s own building and he leaves in the morning and goes to work like most other men do while I attempt to work and keep up with the two kids at home. Now we try to make the  most of our evenings and weekends. Sometimes we sneak in the occasional IM conversation over the course of the day or touch base via texts. But, it just isn’t the same as the good ol’ hours long discussions that were once part of our daily lives.

DaMan and I

Talking with him is one of my absolute favorite things to do. Part of the reason we both like to converse so much is that we rarely have the same opinion about anything. Well, that isn’t completely true. It would be more accurate to say that while we may hold many (even most) of the same opinions and positions on a variety of topics its safe to say that they are for almost totally different reasons. What he finds compelling and persuasive I find far fetched or dry or unappealing and on it goes. We’ve joked that on the topic of artists if you drop us into any art museum in the world we will instantly be drawn to different artists and radically different styles and wonder why on earth the other is so impressed with that uninspired work. This is why we were so elated to find a local artist that we both loved…We now have several of her canvases gracing our home. But I digress…

One of the topics that has received a lot of “air time” in our conversations both before marriage and after is the topic of immunizations. It’s such a complex topic. So heated and people are so adamant on both sides and instead of there being a strong “moderate” middle ground represented it’s mostly just confused people who don’t have any clue where to start in sifting through the literal MOUNTAINS of written material on this topic. And, once they do start sifting the conflicting assertions is enough to nearly drive a person batty.

It’s been a years long process but both of us have read and sifted. Sifted and read. Argued and debated. Shifted and re-shifted. Our opinions have changed and changed again the more we learned. It isn’t a topic I’ve ever written much about because honestly, I don’t like writing on topics that are charged with conflict. DaMan says it’s my uncontrollable inner compulsion to please everybody and there is probably more than a small amount of truth to that. But, I’ve come to the place where I feel like it is important to share what I consider to be one of the most *pivotal* points of information that every parent should know and understand when educating themselves on the topic of vaccines.

On a personal level I find the immunizations given to very tiny babies to be the most concerning of all of the generally recommended and accepted vaccination protocols. DaMan has heard me rant for years now the following or some variation of it “I just don’t understand…The very organizations that recommend these vaccine schedules and vaccine effectiveness also assert that young babies have no immune systems of their own until about a year old. It makes no sense to me how a vaccine can even work to be effective in an infants body if there is no immune system to be able to build immunity in the first place!” I have tried to find a logical explanation for why this has become accepted and strongly recommended practice by a group of experts who don’t even believe that is how an infants body works in the first place. If anybody has an explanation for this please share, I would truly like to understand.

I have been left with a gigantic question mark over this particular vaccine protocol. Today a friend posted a link to a very interesting post about this very long standing sticky point. It is written by Michael Gaeta, a holistic health activist and educator. He shares how he was recently at a conference of traditional health care practitioners and had the opportunity to give a presentation to them as well as listen to a panel discussion of medical experts later in the day. He posts a recording of a question posted to a PhD Immunologist about Infant Immune systems and Vaccines.

You can listen to it on his site here: Immunologist PhD answers Question about Infant Immunity 

His post in it’s entirely can be viewed here: Michael’s post about Dr.’s Conference

The Excerpt from the panel interview with the PhD Immunologist confirmed what I have long thought. The transcript of it is below:

Q. So the science seems fairly clear that for the first year of life, probably, that the immunization is not stimulating the kind of response we expect it to stimulate.

A. True.

Q. So what’s the rationale for continuing to do that if it’s not doing what it’s supposed to be [doing]?

A. The vaccines are given at pediatric wellness visits, and the idea is that you are training the parent to bring their child in at all the pediatric wellness visits, and that it’s only the year visit that actually is truly important. But that for most parents you are not going to get them to bring their kid in if they don’t come in at two months, four months, and six months. And so it’s actually more of a training thing.

It’s interesting, I was on the phone with [?] county public health last week, with one of their vaccine nurses. She was like, ‘Oh, you’re talking about vaccines? Make sure you tell them they have to do that year shot because the first three [the 2, 4 and 6 month shots] don’t work.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I know.’ [laughter].

It really speaks for itself. Assuming that vaccines work as they are theorized to do (there is a certain wing of experts who say that it doesn’t in every case but that is a separate issue in the paperwork mountain) They still will.not.work. in tiny babies. If any vaccines are to be declined in a child’s life I would highly recommend you consider making it the ones administered in that first year of life. Injecting foreign substances into perfectly healthy infants is something that I find cringe worthy on a deeply personal level. My personal squeamishness aside, I just don’t get the point of it on a purely analytical level either.

If you believe vaccinating your children is the wisest course of action, and particularly feel that adhering to the CDC’s recommended schedule is important I would implore you to consider giving your infant 1 year of life to build a very healthy immune system without any vaccines at all introduced to their very young and tiny bodies. Take lots of probiotics yourself if you are breast feeding. 6 Months on up can safely be supplemented with Colostrum, Cod Liver Oil and probiotics directly. Help your baby build a very healthy gut flora and which in turn will support a very healthy immune system. The better established and healthy an infants immune system is the more effective the future vaccines will be, assuming they do indeed work as they should.

Happy Tin Tin baby!

To all my fellow parents out there, the fully vaccinated, the partially vaccinated and the not vaccinated at all…A big hug of encouragement from me. It takes courage these days to choose any course of action on this topic and stick with it. There will be criticisms, threats, warnings and dire prognostications from both sides and head shaking from the two extreme positions over the compromising “middle road” stance as well. Pray for wisdom, do your due diligence in research and education and go forward confident that God will have you do what is best for your particular children. I personally believe this will look different for different families and that it *should* Every circumstance and situation is so unique there is no universal one size fits all perfect protocol to be followed.