AP Baby

I'll start with the good news... Bella gained two pounds since her last visit! Baby girl is really chubbing up. :)

That's the good news from our 2 month WBV (well baby visit) with our pediatrician. The new pediatrician, for the record.

I was very, very apprehensive about this visit because I knew she'd be getting her first round of vaccines. Currently that includes Rotateq, Pediarix, DTaP, and Hib.

It's disturbing how easily the anti-vax culture seeps into your brain, as even though I *know* vaccines are very safe, I was so nervous! Nervous about the pain from the actual sticks (3, Rotateq is an oral vax), nervous about any potential side-effects, just nervous! Although really I guess anytime someone says "Do X and it will hurt your baby," if you are a mom, you are going to think about it a little bit no matter what common sense tells you. We are mama bears, for real!

So who would've thunk that the oral vax, Rotateq, would be the one to cause us a problem?

I guess the nurse administering the vaccines is new to administering oral vaccines. She btw, is the same lady who did our PKU stick which she did a fantastic job at. She was just so fast, it was much better than when my midwife did it (six sticks and the test still had to be redone, awful awful awful!). But she wanted Bella to be lying flat on her back for this. My instinct told me she should be sitting up; I don't know why I didn't say anything, honestly. I just figured this lady knew what she was talking about.

So she has Bella lying flat on her back and starts letting her suck on the end of this little syringe-type thing which has the vaccine in it, and squirting it a little bit too, I guess, because my baby choked. I'm going to go ahead and assume that the problem here was that she was lying on her back and she was not controlling the rate of the flow into her mouth. (When I give her bottles for supplementing, I have her sitting up.) So she really choked. I mean stopped breathing for at least five seconds while this nurse just looked at her, and I was overcome by some odd doctors-office paralysis. I know what to do when a baby chokes, but I just assumed this woman would do something! She did not, so I grabbed her and flipped her over, which seemed to help. Once Bella caught her breath she was soooo upset and screaming, and making wierd little hiccoughing sounds. You could tell the fluid had gone down wrong.

I guess we really should've let her settle down then before moving on to the needles, but we didn't. I am a newbie mom and this whole visit I felt like I just screwed up. Anytime I don't listen to my instincts I wind up regretting it, and this was one of those times.

Poor baby, of course she screamed her little head off when she got stuck; but honestly that part was very, very fast. Awful. But fast. It was calming her down afterwards that I got worried. The nurse had left and I was trying to nurse her and she just absolutely would not calm down and latch on. She was still making that wierd hiccoughing noise. I finally got her latched on, but she kept unlatching, hiccoughing, and then she would start screaming again.

Finally I stepped out and asked for the doctor to come back in. She did, and listened to her lungs to make sure she hadn't aspirated anything. Her lungs were clear, so the doc told me she thought she was refluxing up some of the vax, which was what was causing that scary sound when she was breathing. She advised me that the baby might throw up the vax. Then she told me to stay until her breathing was normal or I felt comfortable; which I did. I think I stayed for another 45 minutes just sitting there, I finally got her to latch on, and then shortly after she fell asleep. Her breathing returned to normal and my heart started beating again.

The doc came back in to check on us and gave me her cell number to call, just in case. The nurse kept poking her head in and apologizing; she clearly felt awful about the whole thing and I think her technique with Rotateq will be modified in future!

Bella slept off and on for the rest of the day, and that night woke up. Smiling. Flirting. Cooing and being her totally normal, beautiful self. I think she's had some mild soreness in her legs, but nothing that has made her very upset.

Who would've thought I would've been foiled by what I thought would be the "easy" vaccine?

Posted by JoAnna at 08:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My pediatrician is anti-vax. Now how is that for irony? All the anti-vax crowd claim that anti-vax pediatricians don't exist, and yet I... a pro-vaxer... manage to find one. I really like her too. She is actually a family practice physician who I've been seeing for my own thyroid issues, and I was so glad when I first found out she takes baby patients. I saw her as the best of both worlds; an MD who also believes in a more holistics perspective of health, including diet and natural healing in her arsenal of remedies.

Now, I find myself in a quandry. I love that she comes from a more natural perspective. When my baby girl was not pooping for the first two weeks of her life (to clarify: she had many meconium poops the first week, then nothing for TEN DAYS! Yes, I was panicking!), she evaluated her overall health and told me not to worry... breastfed babies just do that sometimes. She was right. My baby is now pooping plenty! :) But I can't help thinking that a more traditional MD might have been more invasive and ordered dozens of tests and who knows what, based on the fact that B. was not doing what *most* babies do.

But, I want to vaccinate my baby. I believe after having done much research, that it is the best thing for her. (Though I am dreading the actual shots. So much!) When I went to my doc for our "pre-baby" interview, I asked her about vaccines, and she replied very very carefully. She said that she did not feel comfortable making the decision to vaccinate or not for a parent; that it was up to the parent to decide. Which is a great thing! But I replied, "Of course it is my decision! But I value your professional opinion as part of my decision-making process."

She told me that she does not carry vaccines in the office, that it is not cost-effective to do so. Apparently this is true even for doctors with much bigger practices. She then went on to comment on the Hep B vax and say that "It's not as if babies are having sex or using drugs." Well, no, my baby is not going to have sex or use drugs. But how are children giving each other Hep B?

"It is estimated that 18% of all persons with chronic HBV infection acquired their infections postnatally during early childhood. In some populations, childhood transmission was more important than perinatal transmission as a cause of chronic HBV infection before infant hepatitis B immunization was widely implemented." From immunize.org.

"Other primary means of HB infection include: child-to-child transmission (from children being in contact with one another in household settings), contaminated blood transfusions, unsterile needles and sexual activity." From Unicef.org

She went on to say that the last outbreak of measles occurred in the 80's amongst vaccinated children. This is absolutely not true. The last big outbreak of measles was amongst the non-vaccinating Amish. Apparently it was severe enough that it resulted in many Amish children getting vaccinated!

I can't help but wonder how a care provider could be so misinformed, when an easy google search turns up this information. She did give me a book by Randall Neustaedter called "The Vaccine Guide," before I left. The only thing I can figure is that sometimes people assume that if you read something in a book, and it has a footnote, it *must* be true. Unfortunately, in the case of the anti-vax world, those footnotes frequently are flawed when you trace them back. But who has the time to actually verify all the sources used by the anti-vaxers to make their point?

So anyways... Now I am in the position of needing to find a pediatrician who can vaccinate my babygirl. But I want the best of all possible worlds. I want an AP/NFL, pro-vaxing, evidence-based doctor who doesn't tell me to let my baby cry or feed her solids when she is too young or tell me to supplement my breastmilk with formula.

Really, is that too much to ask???

Posted by JoAnna at 02:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)