Fatherhood anonymous; an open discussion on being a dad.

[alpinevibes]

I understand what you guys are saying and some good points are being made. I didn’t emphasize it in my first post, so I will reiterate. I have a congenital autoimmune disease. When the second round of vaccines were administered to me at 4 months old, albeit May of 1976, I ran a dangerously high fever for almost 5 hours. My pediatrician was surprised that there weren’t more lasting implications. So, my concern is not winning the reverse lottery, it’s that my child’s family history indicates a greater likelihood of being a statistic.

Have you had more reactions with any other vaccines throughout your life?

I would also add that my understanding is that vaccine safety, dosage accuracy, handling, administration and many other factors have improved substantially to limit/reduce adverse reactions over the last 50 years.

[Danno]

Nobody likes seeing their kid get poked and cry.

I would share your concerns with your kid's doctor then -- if you trust your pediatrician -- do what they say. And if you don't trust them, try to find a different one.

[californiagrown]

I realize that one anecdotal experience does not change the odds, that doesn’t make it less stark.

It is natural and good to be concerned, especially because your situation is a little different than most. But, you also need to realize that you are far from an expert in this area. So, talk to your pediatrician, and if you feel it necessary have your pediatrician refer you to a specialist. Medicine has changed quite a lot in the nearly half century since you had a bad reaction. You need to know when you are out of your depth and need to trust someone with magnitudes more expertise than you.

[lowsparkco]

You guys hit on a lot of the same things I often think about. In an ideal world I would like to administer fewer vaccines per visit and go more frequently, and that was given as an option and one we may choose in the future.

Absolutely, protocol and QC has changed markedly in 47 years. I wasn’t vaccinated again until immediately before public school started at 5.5 years old. I have had a few other adverse reactions to vaccines although none I would characterize as life threatening. I actually had a pretty bad reaction to the third Covid vaccine. I take some responsibility though, as I was a couple weeks out from running a local marathon and did a 22 mile run in high heat index early the morning of having the poke in the late afternoon. It mostly was localized at the site, I got a hard bump under the skin, patches of red irritated skin, and a lot of soreness in my arm.

Again, thanks for all the thoughtful comments. Our baby’s doctor has been great. Eventually you simply have to make a decision and be willing to accept the consequences. My little girl spiked a temporary fever, had some serious sweats, and took a much longer than normal nap. But she doesn’t seem to have her dad’s shitty hyper immune response gene.

[Touring_Sedan]

Vaccinate, don't vaccinate, whatever floats your boat. As long as the information you're using to make your decision is based in reality and not what Joe Rogan told you. Personally, I don't take car advice from my veterinarian, nor would I take medical advice from some rando on the internet. Sounds like your decisions have been based on facts.

[SchralphMacchio]

I understand what you guys are saying and some good points are being made. I didn’t emphasize it in my first post, so I will reiterate. I have a congenital autoimmune disease. When the second round of vaccines were administered to me at 4 months old, albeit May of 1976, I ran a dangerously high fever for almost 5 hours. My pediatrician was surprised that there weren’t more lasting implications. So, my concern is not winning the reverse lottery, it’s that my child’s family history indicates a greater likelihood of being a statistic.

IMO, that hints at the great problem we’re facing as a society. We’re rather trained to pick a side and SHOUT at each other. We fail to see a lot of the nuances. You don’t have to be an immunologist to recognize that a parent having an adverse reaction would be an indication of higher risk.

Thanks for clarifying this. I can see how being in a unique situation you feel caught in the middle of all the noise. The stats for you and your family are not the same as the public at large. That said, my understanding of the vaccine ramp up and monitoring process is that it is set up to catch groups that are at higher probabilities for adverse reaction, like what happened with the adenovirus vector C19 vaccine and cerebral clots in 2021 - the system caught the rare issues and vaccine recommendations were quickly adjusted for groups at higher susceptibility. It’s not a perfect process, and when you are actually caught in a rare situation the gross probabilities are not encouraging I’m sure.

I think one of the biggest problems with medicine today is that, insurance companies and health providers are set up so that people like my wife simply cannot dedicate the time to review in complete reassuring detail with parents, your child’s specific medical issues and how your and any known and unknown medical history would or would not inform any changes to recommended standard of care, and why, how the VAERS (vaccine adverse effects reporting) system is set up, how the vaccines were tested and developed, the chain of custody controls, what to do if there is a reaction, and how the calculation of probabilities and known risks all balances out. That’s also beside addressing the toxic metals and conspiracy issues for those who bring it up (which in Lane County is a lot, though not nearly as much as Jackson and Josephine counties). Insurance companies aren’t paying for the time it takes to really work through it so that all parties feel like they’ve been heard and the process is reassuringly thorough, and clinics aren’t scheduling the time for it because they are jamming ____ patients in a day to get ____ in billing codes submitted to get paid back to keep the staff paid and the lights on. So then you are left feeling like not having the chance to ask questions and get reassurances that the guidance you are getting really is tailored to your kid, and probably left prone to feeling caught in the middle of all the noise from all sides. But really, the docs are trying to rush the normal and healthy kids through the clinic and hospital beds so that they can focus on the complex and unhealthy kids who desperately need a ton of attention - and I can assure you they are trying their best and thinking about what’s best for the kids, also 99.9+% of the time (but the docs also are humans who only have so much attention and energy). It can definitely help to be prepared for clinic visits with your medical history details and top 2-3 questions to make the best use of that limited time.

Let me know if I’m off base here or if this is close to home. This stuff is literally dinner conversations for me almost every night.

[lowsparkco]

Good post, thank you.

I came to Deschutes County after nearly a decade in Jackson/Josephine - that’s definitely effecting my feelings about the subject.

We had a couple other concerns of stuff that has arisen in the last 2 months, so we discussed those things first. Probably the hardest thing to swallow is the “what if” an adverse reaction occurs and all you really get is call 9-1-1. I understand that healthcare professionals regularly deal with patients and parents all across the range of SES, education, intellect, emotional IQ, etc. spectrum, and I truly do empathize. But, call 9-1-1 is not the answer I want to hear. Certainly we would be forced to trust an ER doc if her symptoms became severe. A word of encouragement concerning their preparedness would be helpful. I just assume the best as what else are you going to do? No one has all the answers and there are no guarantees.

[californiagrown]

Good post, thank you.

I came to Deschutes County after nearly a decade in Jackson/Josephine - that’s definitely effecting my feelings about the subject.

We had a couple other concerns of stuff that has arisen in the last 2 months, so we discussed those things first. Probably the hardest thing to swallow is the “what if” an adverse reaction occurs and all you really get is call 9-1-1. I understand that healthcare professionals regularly deal with patients and parents all across the range of SES, education, intellect, emotional IQ, etc. spectrum, and I truly do empathize. But, call 9-1-1 is not the answer I want to hear. Certainly we would be forced to trust an ER doc if her symptoms became severe. A word of encouragement concerning their preparedness would be helpful. I just assume the best as what else are you going to do? No one has all the answers and there are no guarantees.

have you had your kid do some allergy testing? When my kid was first breastfeeding we had to run a full panel of allergy tests to see what was making him poop blood. turned out he was allergic to my wife eating rice, of all things. But my point is that, with a family history of autoimmune/severe allergies, i would think you could get referred to an allergy specialist which may give you some peace of mind about severe allergic reactions. As i said before, lean on medical experts in your community that you trust (not just seek out because they market towards a specific crowd), especially if you have good insurance.

Another thing to think about when considering to not vaccinate your kid is the social aspect. I wouldnt be stoked to have an unvaccinated kid sharing toys and snot/saliva with my kid, if the school district/daycare even allows your kid to attend, and when other kids learn about the unvaccinated kid, they can be ruthless.

[subtle plague]

It’s like 99.999+%. Getting struck by lightning is like 10-100x more likely.

The other thing is probability and consequences. The consequences of vaccine related injury range from an acute 30 minute reaction to a few days of allergy issues, to, yes, blood clots or other rare conditions that could linger for weeks. At a 1 in 100,000 to 1 in 1 million probability. The probability of death or permanent injury from a vaccine is even lower. Can you trust them? Sure, there are ultra rare swiss cheese accidents where the chain of custody controls for a vaccine can break down and something wildly rare can happen too … But diseases like RSV can permanently debilitate kids … at much much much much higher probability.

I’m not an expert, but my wife is. She’s the one who spent 7 years of her life training to be a doctor, studying for the hardest tests, reading peer reviewed papers, etc. She’s the one pleading with parents when the kids are born to do vitamin k injections and other shots. The parents who say to her, “I just don’t know who to trust,” don’t understand the rigor that doctors need to go through to provide trustworthy medical advice, rigor that random people on Youtune don’t have to go through.

My wife is also the one who treats those same unvaccinated kids who are coding with RSV at 6 weeks of age, stressing to keep them alive. “I almost watched a baby die today” is something I hear a lot at the dinner table. Last November’s tripledemic for young kids was very very real.

I get that needles are scary. I get that it’s an ordeal to teach your kids that the super quick nurse who pokes you is trying to keep you safe and that trust me the other kids will think your bamdaid is super cool and yes you can play with the iPad after we get home from clinic because you are super brave, while they might kick and scream. I get that we don’t get to watch the cooks in the kitchen and it’s a leap of faith to trust it. But really - with those odds, just ask any gambler or hedge fund trader how they would feel about vaccines. Slam dunk doesn’t even come close describing the probabilistic outcomes of with vs without.

$0.02 from someone living with someone who tries to keep kids alive on a daily basis.

Don't get me wrong. I was with you on the 99.9999% [emoji6] im just lazy and sick of debating nonsense probabilities with people who are scared of vaccines or Planes ( irrational psychological fears aside.... those people should see a shrink anyway) and yet get into cars and are apparently not scared of cancer probabilities....

My wife has a PhD in Biochemistry so we like proper science in our meds. [emoji6]

[Boissal]

Good post, thank you.

I came to Deschutes County after nearly a decade in Jackson/Josephine - that’s definitely effecting my feelings about the subject.

We had a couple other concerns of stuff that has arisen in the last 2 months, so we discussed those things first. Probably the hardest thing to swallow is the “what if” an adverse reaction occurs and all you really get is call 9-1-1. I understand that healthcare professionals regularly deal with patients and parents all across the range of SES, education, intellect, emotional IQ, etc. spectrum, and I truly do empathize. But, call 9-1-1 is not the answer I want to hear. Certainly we would be forced to trust an ER doc if her symptoms became severe. A word of encouragement concerning their preparedness would be helpful. I just assume the best as what else are you going to do? No one has all the answers and there are no guarantees.

Is your condition hereditary? Off the top of my head it's about 50/50 on that front.
I'd be shitting bricks if I had something running down the family tree and it was time to vaccinate the baby. They can pre-medicate you against a potential reaction to a vaccine but the baby not so much.
Shit, I'm 100% pro-vaccine and I got a bit squeamish last week at the 4-months visit for my daughter and I have no reason to suspect she will have a reaction. The look on her face when she got shots in both thighs and the intensity of the screaming after the pokes were hard to stomach.

[skaredshtles]

<snip> I got a bit squeamish last week at the 4-months visit for my daughter and I have no reason to suspect she will have a reaction. The look on her face when she got shots in both thighs and the intensity of the screaming after the pokes were hard to stomach.

You'd better HTFU, Nancy!

[skinipenem]

You guys hit on a lot of the same things I often think about. In an ideal world I would like to administer fewer vaccines per visit and go more frequently, and that was given as an option and one we may choose in the future.

Absolutely, protocol and QC has changed markedly in 47 years. I wasn’t vaccinated again until immediately before public school started at 5.5 years old. I have had a few other adverse reactions to vaccines although none I would characterize as life threatening. I actually had a pretty bad reaction to the third Covid vaccine. I take some responsibility though, as I was a couple weeks out from running a local marathon and did a 22 mile run in high heat index early the morning of having the poke in the late afternoon. It mostly was localized at the site, I got a hard bump under the skin, patches of red irritated skin, and a lot of soreness in my arm.

Again, thanks for all the thoughtful comments. Our baby’s doctor has been great. Eventually you simply have to make a decision and be willing to accept the consequences. My little girl spiked a temporary fever, had some serious sweats, and took a much longer than normal nap. But she doesn’t seem to have her dad’s shitty hyper immune response gene.

Quick response here, so take it with a grain of salt.

Sore arm, hard red bump, and irritated soon does not reishi a bad reaction to a covid vaccine.

Of your autoimmune disorder is serious, then consider going to see a geneticist for your kid.

An allergist isn't a bad idea either.

...some of the above may be overkill.l depends on you willingness to go down the rabbit hole I suppose.

Sent from my SM-S908U1 using Tapatalk

[Boissal]

You'd better HTFU, Nancy!

She often makes faces that suggest someone is ripping her fingernails off and screams bloody murder when someone looks at her the wrong way so I should be used to it by now... but I'm still in the new dad phase and haven't yet learned to sniff through her bullshit
The other day we came back from a hike and I brushed the top of her head against the doorframe of the car when transferring her from her carrier to the car seat. She turned purple and started wailing as if I was beating her up. Right in front of a pack of 6 ladies starting their hikes. Got the most murderous looks and some comments about unfit fathers and their poor kids...

[skaredshtles]

She often makes faces that suggest someone is ripping her fingernails off and screams bloody murder when someone looks at her the wrong way so I should be used to it by now... but I'm still in the new dad phase and haven't yet learned to sniff through her bullshit
The other day we came back from a hike and I brushed the top of her head against the doorframe of the car when transferring her from her carrier to the car seat. She turned purple and started wailing as if I was beating her up. Right in front of a pack of 6 ladies starting their hikes. Got the most murderous looks and some comments about unfit fathers and their poor kids...

You would have been amused the time I took the kids in the bike trailer to the library and proceeded to take a turn on the path in the park a bit too fast and rolled the trailer. Fortunately, since it was just a "quick trip to the library" I hadn't bothered to strap the kids in. They came tumbling out in quite a dramatic fashion.

The park denizens (old folks and moms, mostly) were not amused.

[Danno]

I've rolled the trailer too. But my kid was strapped in, I'm not a barbarian.

[schuss]

#1 - oh my gosh, are you ok?
#2 - you're fine, run some dirt in it
#3 (according to friends) - pipe down, I'm doing something

The terror is real and being concerned is a good thing. Just note that the Internet will cater to any fear you have, so seek professionals

[skaredshtles]

I've rolled the trailer too. But my kid was strapped in, I'm not a barbarian.

I have been called barbarous more than once.

I figured it built character.

[skaredshtles]

#1 - oh my gosh, are you ok?
#2 - you're fine, run some dirt in it
#3 (according to friends) - pipe down, I'm doing something

The terror is real and being concerned is a good thing. Just note that the Internet will cater to any fear you have, so seek professionals

Most of my kids' friends know me as the "Rub some dirt in it" dude.

[SchralphMacchio]

She often makes faces that suggest someone is ripping her fingernails off and screams bloody murder when someone looks at her the wrong way so I should be used to it by now... but I'm still in the new dad phase and haven't yet learned to sniff through her bullshit

Trust me, the 4 years old screaming when you turn off Gabby’s Dollhouse after the pre-negotiated amount of TV time (so that you can cook dinner or some other trivial yet mission critical household task) is way way worse (in both severity and duration) than the 4 month old screaming after a poke!
[emoji2957][emoji2957][emoji2957][emoji2957][emoji2957]

Welcome to the madhouse!

[Danno]

Most of my kids' friends know me as the "Rub some dirt in it" dude.

"no blood no tears"

[schuss]

Trust me, the 4 years old screaming when you turn off Gabby’s Dollhouse after the pre-negotiated amount of TV time (so that you can cook dinner or some other trivial yet mission critical household task) is way way worse (in both severity and duration) than the 4 month old screaming after a poke!
[emoji2957][emoji2957][emoji2957][emoji2957][emoji2957]

Welcome to the madhouse!

Oh man, nothing better than negotiating to a truce amount only to find out your kids are Putin like in their flagrant disregard of "last show".

[yeahman]

Bumps, bangs, shots, scrapes, falls, wipeouts, whatevers... NEVER ask a kid if they're okay. Don't bend over and look, don't acknowledge in the slightest that anything out of the ordinary has happened. Just keep doing whatever you're doing. They will take their cues from you, and if you completely ignore what happened, the majority of the time they will forget anything happened within a few seconds.

If they are actually hurt, you'll know it soon enough and can deal with it then. But never ask if they are okay.

[skaredshtles]

Bumps, bangs, shots, scrapes, falls, wipeouts, whatevers... NEVER ask a kid if they're okay. Don't bend over and look, don't acknowledge in the slightest that anything out of the ordinary has happened. Just keep doing whatever you're doing. They will take their cues from you, and if you completely ignore what happened, the majority of the time they will forget anything happened within a few seconds.

If they are actually hurt, you'll know it soon enough and can deal with it then. But never ask if they are okay.

This is a guy that has been a dad before...

[east or bust]

Bumps, bangs, shots, scrapes, falls, wipeouts, whatevers... NEVER ask a kid if they're okay. Don't bend over and look, don't acknowledge in the slightest that anything out of the ordinary has happened. Just keep doing whatever you're doing. They will take their cues from you, and if you completely ignore what happened, the majority of the time they will forget anything happened within a few seconds.

If they are actually hurt, you'll know it soon enough and can deal with it then. But never ask if they are okay.

thank you

[Touring_Sedan]

Bumps, bangs, shots, scrapes, falls, wipeouts, whatevers... NEVER ask a kid if they're okay. Don't bend over and look, don't acknowledge in the slightest that anything out of the ordinary has happened. Just keep doing whatever you're doing. They will take their cues from you, and if you completely ignore what happened, the majority of the time they will forget anything happened within a few seconds.

If they are actually hurt, you'll know it soon enough and can deal with it then. But never ask if they are okay.

This x1000. It's like walking in NYC, you don't make eye contact.