We are not going to vaccinate our child (although I may get homeopathic prophylactic
‘immunisation’ for her) because, basically, there was no vaccine, upon my thorough investigation, which does not seem riskier than the disease.

I spent 3 years as a laboratory technician in a vaccine production lab in the 1990’s, so have a pretty sound idea of the principals and actual production of vaccines. There is a range of highly toxic chemicals added in the processes, including aluminium, mercury (Thiomersal - less now but its still there), and preservatives. Mercury, particularly, builds up in the body’s fat cells, and aluminium causes nerve and brain damage.

Vaccines are produced from the disease organism (virus or bacteria) itself. Part of the organism, or the whole live one (usually viruses) is injected into the baby to stimulate the immune system to ‘recognise’ the disease. Use of live vaccines often causes the disease it is meant to prevent, as exact doses for different people which will stimulate the immune response but not cause active disease are impossible to predict. They are pretty hit and miss technology. They are also a very unnatural and unhealthy way of stimulating the immune system, hence the side effects.

Vaccines only protect against one or a few strains of the disease – many, like flu, are constantly changing or have other strains which are not in the vaccine. Vaccination in these cases has meant that the other, previously less prevalent strains of the diseases are simply gaining prominence.

Most disease organisms used to produce vaccine are ‘grown’ in nutrient mediums which are derived from animal tissues, creating a real risk of injecting humans with animal diseases. There are diseases now known which are created by tiny organisms smaller than viruses (BSE, ‘Mad Cow Disease’, is one) which are pretty much impossible to screen for. The contamination of both Sabin and Salk Polio vaccines with SV40, a monkey virus which has been linked to causing cancer, happened in this way. Worse, the vaccines contaminated with this virus were still given to children (‘used up’) well after the problem was known – well into the 1960’s, and possibly into the 1990’s. www.sv40foundation.org . Many vaccines are also produced using genetically manipulated bacteria, toxins and yeasts to grow the disease proteins.

Vaccines do not give the same immunity as catching the disease naturally, and immunity usually wears off. Many children are offered ‘catch up shots’ if they miss them in early childhood, despite the fact that most of the diseases were only dangerous in babyhood.

Many diseases that we vaccinate for such as chicken pox, Hepatitis A and rubella are very mild in childhood but very dangerous in adulthood, and childhood vaccination usually wears off before adulthood. This increases the incidences of these diseases later in life when they are most dangerous. Some diseases that we vaccinate babies for, particularly Hep B, are ‘lifestyle diseases’ and can only be caught by direct body fluid swaps, such as in sex or IV drug use. I don’t know many newborns who are into those things.

Vaccines are never 100% effective in preventing disease (they vary from 50% to 90 plus %), and all have side effects, which range from ‘mild’ (such as fevers and rashes) to extremely severe (brain damage, nerve damage, death). Vaccination has been clearly linked to long term problems such as autism, asthma and allergies. It is estimated that fewer than 10% of very severe reactions are ever reported – there are many families out there who swear that their baby was perfectly normal before vaccination, and damaged to some degree, often with severe brain damage, afterwards. Australia, like America, has funds in place for financial compensation of victims of severe vaccine damage. Guess you have to plan for these things.

The safety testing regimes which all other drugs must undergo before being released onto the market has not and does not apply to vaccines, for a variety of reasons. One is that the studies required would be time consuming and costly and vaccines are considered ‘too important’ to be withdrawn until they have been properly safety tested. Thus many have been withdrawn for being too dangerous after years of use, such as the Polio one which passed on a monkey cancer – causing virus, or the Pertussis (Whooping cough) one withdrawn only recently for severe side effects. Others have medically documented severe side effects, such as MMR, linked to autism (which, by the way, vaccinates against three diseases, none of which are considered dangerous in childhood), and are still injected into millions of children daily worldwide. It is also very difficult to verify long term chronic problems such as the rise in asthma, allergies and other long term problems which may be caused by vaccination.

The most dangerous way to vaccinate is with the use of combined polyvalent vaccines, such as MMR and many others. I would have considered giving my girl the Pertussis vaccine, but for one thing it is new, and the vaccine it replaced was demonstrably dangerous, (it caused screaming fits, high fever, brain damage), and for another it only comes in a combined shot with two other diseases which I do not want to inject her with.

In short, vaccination is a gamble, and after weighing up the odds I’ve decided that it’s too dangerous compared to the risks of the diseases. I plan to keep her healthy with two years of breastfeeding, never putting her in childcare (I wouldn’t for a variety of other reasons anyway), using homeopathics and other extremely effective natural medicine choices to keep her well, and simply creating a healthy immune system in her by feeding her well and avoiding noxious environmental situations.

There are various solutions of different vaccine schedules, less vaccines, safer combinations or ‘natural’, risk-free alternatives for parent who are concerned about vaccination to consider, but these are rarely if ever presented as a choice to parents by health authorities. Wouldn’t like to upset the drug companies?

Disease is a risk, but vaccination is the certainty of injecting noxious substances into tiny children to try to force an unnatural immune response. In some situations it’s a gamble worth taking, in some it isn’t. That simple. In a theoretically free(ish) society, it plagues me deeply that having an invasive, largely untested medical procedure like vaccination performed on one’s children is not presented as a choice, but enforced using at least, guilt, and at most, twisted permutations and uses of the law. So much for freedom of choice.

Inducement to birth?

How long is a human pregnancy?

If you ask that question, the answer you'll generally get is 37-42 weeks. The correct answer, to my mind, would be, "Who's pregnancy?"

Mine was meant to be longer than 42 weeks - I know this because at 42 weeks my little girl was happily chuntering along in there, all swimmy healthy fluid, hiccups and grand movements. Her head was engaged, I was starting to slowly dilate, but it just wasn't time yet.

But doctors don't like it. In some ways its fair enough - in another life, I worked in child protection, and one wall of the a supervisor's office sported a small poster which showed a picture of a man tightrope walking - the caption, in balloons on each end of his balance pole, read 'too much intervention' on one side, 'not enough intervention' on the other. Doctors have to hedge their bets, and they hedge cautiously, in the sense that they generally prefer to rush in and sort things out rather than let nature take its course. No doubt this has saved many a life, but sometimes...

Have you been induced? Have you felt the Syntocinon kick?

My birth was nothing like I expected, and I expect this is because it was controlled by strong medicine rather than by my body.

And no-one told me the risks.

I had a fantastic midwife, liked the 'baby - friendly hospital' I was to birth in, had done a form of hypno - birthing called 'Calmbirth', and thought I was ready. But at 42 weeks I was induced, and the experience was, I'm sure, both unnecesary and uneccesarily risky.

It's odd that we just pop the pill, steel ourselves for the slice of the needle or the knife, without expecting to have the benefits and risks presented to us as a matter of course. But you have to go on line, research, track down even the most basic product information for anything now. Nice of drug companies to want to save paper.

The doctors said that 42 weeks "is considered post-term." So I agreed to have my baby's life-supporting waters drained away by a hooked needle, to be connected to monitors for the entire eleven hours of hell, to be hooked on by a single fang in the back of my hand to a Syntocinon (Pitocin- an artificial form of oxytocin, the birth hormone) drip.

The labour was agonising. I'm no sook with pain, I've had broken bones and dog bites stitched without anaesthetic and been smashed by horse hooves. This was like fire, like firestorm, that took hold and crushed that baby from my body. Nearly everyone who is induced this way has serious pain relief. Many have ceasers, assisted births and other interventions. It's not a nice way to birth, it's hard and fast and frightening and out of control.

The potential side effects of artificial oxytocin for induction include; hypotension, water intoxication (potentially lethal), hypertonic uterus (continual extreme contraction), uterine rupture (!) uterine inversion, stillbirth, heart problems, nausea, and asthma.

The risk of other forms of medical intervention in birth once medical induction begins are hugely exaggerated, because it so seriously amplifies the trauma and strain of birth on the mother and baby's bodies. For the baby, the exaggerated and close together contractions have been likened to being held under water and only allowed to gasp for air before being pushed back under again.

Maybe I'm overreacting, but those seem rather serious to me. How many was I informed of before agreeing to this?
None.

After the birth, to my horror, I learned that at one point my daughter suffered fetal distress serious enough to concern the midwife. My contractions were so close together, right from the beginning, that they felt almost constant, and the pain between them almost unbearable. Somehow I avoided pain relief except gas, but only because the drip was turned off for a while instead. My daughter was extracted by vacuum and with an epesiotomy cut after a three hour long second stage, put down to 'maternal exhaustion'.

Women and their partners should be informed of these, and other risks with induction. It's that simple. We should know what we're signing up for before the needle goes in and the road is taken; once that first foot falls on the induction path, there truly is no way back.

Would I do it again? Not just for a long but perfectly healthy pregnancy. For a life threatening situation, of course. But a longer than average pregnancy, monitored to ensure the continuing health of the unborn baby, isn't a life threatening situation.

It's just a long pregnancy.
If I could replay the tape, I'd just relax and enjoy it a little longer, and wait for my little person to be ready.

The midwife's comment upon my tiny (less than 3 kgs) daughter's emergence? "Oh, she looks almost premature. She looks like she could have had another month in there." Guess I should have listened to my child, my body and those ultrasounds that said she was just fine in there.

And waited just that little bit longer.

Jumping right in

What is this baby thing about?

My little strong new(ish) daughter is breastfeeding on a pillow on my lap and its the best seat in the house. She's brought me new stuff - new thoughts, new emotions, new me. Her hands have grown; they look almost big! In the last ten weeks, plus the nearly 10 months it took to make her, I've grown too - so much bigger now! And not just my middle...

I want to write here about baby stuff, preggers stuff, and all the stuff inbetween. I want to write about choices, because it's an interesting word, with some strange permutations as far as I can make out.

As soon as that hugely tiny new potential person takes hold in your belly, you're riddled with new choices to go with her. Medicine seems to be oddly interested in the goings-on in there, and there's doctors for every occasion. Doctors to scan, doctors to inject, doctors to poke about, doctors to cut and suction and birth, doctors to help and hinder. I liked some of it. The sight of that delicately beautiful curve of spine on the nineteen week ultrasound, the little leggy blob on the eleven week one were the happiest pictures I've seen. The doctor who said, "You have one baby' changed my world - I have a BABY in there?! Being pregnant is one thing, but a BABY?! And the one who said, "Here's your baby!" and held aloft a tiny slimy whitish person with wriggling thin limbs and a keen face who is the love of my life, of our lives ... I like that doctor. But the one who prescribed antibiotics while I was breastfeeding, assuring me they were safe, information which clashed with what I later researched ... hm, not so sure. Particularly for an infection that turned out not to exist.

Maybe then it's as much about the news they have as about what they do. But regardless, there are so many lollies to choose from now. Tests, anyone? Amniocentesis? Induction for one? Vaccinations galore for you, Madame?

Already I've made some choices that I wouldn't have if I knew what I know now. I wouldn't allow that monster Syntocinin into my body to kick the baby out of my belly again. Not when she was demonstrably well and happy in there, hiccuping and squiggling, when my pregnancy was just an unliked length. I am sure, though, that I won't allow those tiny needle pricks of vaccine into her precious body, and that's a choice that's made harder by emotion. Why is that one about guilt? Why is it not just another decision about an invasive medical procedure like all the others?

That's where the concept of choice gets murky, sticky, because there's free, knowledgeable decisions, and there's shoulds, musts, why nots. There's humped backs from the tiniest questions, there's eating guilt from the non- herd decision.

But, there's right for me. Hopefully I'm doing that.

Back to my baby, who needs me more than internet world does right now!