Mommy found... she just isn't passionate about the vaccine debate...

So Drake saw a doctor for the first time yesterday.  Well, his first acute care doctor.  Since I bring him to work, he's been adored by more than one Psych MD!

Drake was officially weighed by a doctor for the first time and came in at 13lbs 13oz -- which is 90-95 percentile for his age.  We also got his 2 month shots.  Well, most of them.  We did choose to skip the hep B shot.

One of the things that made us choose to skip the Hep B (besides the fact that Drake is just a little young for a girlfriend or IV drugs) was that it looked to me like a lot of westernized countries either don't have it on the recommended immunization lists or recommend at a much later age.  Canada, for instance, doesn't recommend Hep B until the pre-teen years if the mother isn't a carrier.  http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/im/is-cv/index-eng.php

In doing our vaccine research, I pretty much came to the conclusion that if I were to ever get a real opinion on the issue I'd have to be doing the research myself.  Not research about vaccines, but vaccine research.  It seems to me like there are plenty of good arguments on both sides, and without the intricate details about study methodology, percentages of side effects, etc - I just really won't take a stance.  We tried a couple different documentaries, and it seemed to me the FrontLine documentary was one of the most well-rounded. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/vaccines/  (We "watched now" on netflix.)

I do believe that each child needs to be looked at individually.  If Drake had been a preemie (lol!) I probably wouldn't have vaccinated as early as recommended, etc.  But, perhaps since I work in public health, or perhaps due to the marvelously smart woman we stayed with in Toronto who studied immunology, we bit the bullet, and apologized profusely to Drake that we were letting him hurt.  He cries so infrequently it made the whole ordeal that much worse.  He also got his heel pricked for the newborn screening - so the pain stage seemed to take forever.

He was definitely not himself the rest of the afternoon or through the night.  He didn't get a fever or anything though.  It's been about 24 hours now, and he seems to be back to his old self.  Well, young self.