Attn Non-Vax Mamas

[A'smommy]

Originally Posted by katiedidbug Mommyto3girls, I'm so sorry for your loss. My doctor's nurse called back and said they would refuse to see him if he didn't vax. Every other doctor I called said they wouldn't take him either. I have a pediatrician at my church, so I called his office, and I'm waiting for his nurse to return my call.

Ditto on the condolences to Mommyto3girls...what an awful experience.

Katiedidbug, did you try getting recc's from other crunchy moms? Mothering.com has a "Finding Your Tribe" board. You might try that for real-life recc's in your town. There is almost always at least one pedi that will take you, but they can't advertise that. The staff probably wouldn't even acknowledge it in most cases--sometimes they don't know (patient confidentiality and all). Consider saying you're "delaying," not "refusing"---you can delay as long as you think you need to. The other bit of advice I would share is not to discuss it with the staff...only the MD. (When they tried to schedule us for shots, I just said, "Not today.") If there are other docs in the practice and you see one of them, they may try again to convince you, but somehow the other doc's notes seem to carry a lot of influence.

Hopefully the connection you have with the one pedi at your church will help. Keep in mind they have to "toe the party line," as it were, with the AAP's recommendations or risk losing their membership.

But, ultimately, you're the mama. You've gotta do what you think is best.
GL!

[katiedidbug]

The doctor at my church said that the reason so many docs have that policy is that they say if you're not going to trust them with vaccinations, you may not trust them with other medical issues. It makes sense. He also spent some time trying to convince me to vax. I think I'm going to go to a family practioner.

[snowbird25ca]

Dd#1 who lives with my parents was fully vaxed on schedule and developed type 1 diabetes within weeks of her MMR shot. It's a recognized adverse event according to the package insert. That got me questioning vaxes...

Dd#2 we decided to delay & selectively vax. Her 2nd DTaP shot gave her an awful reaction and we stopped completely and I did more research.

Ds will never be vaxed and dd#2 will receive no more vaxes. If dd#1's medical decisions were in my hands she'd receive no more vaxes either.

My reasons are multiple... obviously partly because I've seen adverse reactions in 2 of my kids and don't feel like rolling the dice with ds. But also, most of the diseases vaxed for aren't risky.. there's a whole lot of hype about the diseases, but if you really research the disease and treatments for it, and look back to our grandparents, most of them will have had measles & mumps and chicken pox and not thought anything of it. Even pertussis - whooping cough, can be treated with high dose vit C so that it's not such an awful illness to deal with.

I'm also not comfortable with the ingredients in vaxes... but mostly I'm just uncomfortable with messing with the immune system in general. I think illness builds a stronger body in the long run, and I'd rather deal with a few weeks illness here & there than subject my kids to the unknown long term risks of vaccination.

p.s. You've gotten lots of great links earlier in the thread... if you have more specific questions including finding out info about exemptions for school and daycare, check out the forum at mothering.com. When it all comes down to it, there is no unbiased info in the search for info about vaxes. The best thing is to break each vax down disease by disease... read the insert, read the ingredients, read the adverse effects from the vaccine. Then go read about the disease, typical course of the disease, worst case scenario of the disease, how common the worst case scenario is & what kind of treatments may or may not be available for it.

Good luck in your search and decision. Remember you can always vax later, but once the needle is given, there's no undoing the effects regardless of how negative they might turn out to be.

[tessa1002]

I can't believe that its normal to have peds refuse patients because of vaxing! That is so horrible! I go to a very mainstream office here in mainstream Akron, OH. Its actually city hospitals ped offices, Children's Hospital Pediatric Associates. When I asked them about the vaxing issue they were shocked that anyone would refuse a child based on their vax preference. They told me its my child and I should be making the decisions, not them! I know someone mentioned www.mothering.com, but there is also a yahoo group, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AP_Doctor_Referral/ , where you can find a non-vaxing doc in your area. Good luck!