We got judged by our a doctor for choosing not to do the flu shot.
UnexpectedlyMom11
member
I don't normally post on this board, but I lurk an awful lot, and feel myself in agreement with many if the ideas of AP. I didn't know where else to post this for fear of flames and pitch forks from some of the other boards on here.
We had LO's 9mth appt. last week and saw a different doctor then we usually do. We are on a delayed vaccine schedule to begin with and that combined with us declining the flu shot got us a lecture from this doctor about putting our son's life at risk. I wanted to throat punch him, and spout off all of my research and knowledge in the area but decided to just nod and say I understand the implications and still choose not to do it. I am so sick of constantly having to defend my choices reguarding his health care to others that I just shut down. Has anyone experienced anything like this? What should I have done?
Re: We got judged by our a doctor for choosing not to do the flu shot.
I had a doctor in our practice tell me that I was going to end up sending my son to the ER by doing baby-led weaning. I had already spoken to my normal doctor about it, and he was on board and supportive, so I just smiled and said ok, and am just never going to schedule an appointment with her again.
It's hard when you have done your homework, and the doctor is so rigid and unwilling to listen -- but then they're probably thinking the same thing about you, except they have medical school on their side, so really it's a hard one to win. Smile and nod, and move on. It's not worth the aggravation to argue.
I have been pretty lucky so far, but I make an effort to not discuss my parenting with our pediatrician. I did get quite an earful from my first OB doctor when I turned down the flu shot. We're still on the fence about giving our daughter one. If I do turn it down, I hope I can keep my response short and simple.
To be fair, that's their job. They see dozens of kids and their parents, so I am sure after a while they lose their tact. Or maybe that doctor was having a bad day and misdirected it on you.
If you are confident in your decisions then don't allow yourself to become so defensive. This is just one of a million things a person is not going to agree with you on. I say just smile, nod, and let it be.
I think when you go against medical advice you need to be prepared for these kinds of responses with something other than a throat punch. I really don't think you have done more research than the doctor so I do understand his concern. It must be difficult for pediatricians who have to nod and smile while parents go against medical advise.
Of course it is your decision but respect where he/she is coming from too. And find another pediatrician if you're this uncomfortable.
OP: Can you please tell me what have you found in your research that made you decide against it? I'm not trying to be a smartass here just genuinely asking. But can you please be very specific with facts, studies and such. TIA
My Blog: Naturally Mindful
Do your best to make sure you don't see that doctor again - and only make appointments with the pedi you feel comfortable with. I am so glad my pediatrician is totally reasonable and cool and has never given me a hard time about shots I have chosen to delay or forgo altogether. We don't do a flu shot either - when they ask if we want one I say "no thanks" and they say "OK." My very well researched pediatrician doesn't push flu shot at all.
I wouldn't see a pedi I didn't feel comfortable with. I'm not interested in having a philosophical discussion, much less an argument, while I'm trying to wrangle my toddler at the doctor's office.
"When it comes to sleeping, whatever your baby does is normal. If one thing has damaged parents enjoyment of their babies, it's rigid expectations about how and when the baby should sleep." ~ James McKenna, Ph.D., Mother Baby Behavioral Sleep Center, University of Notre Dame
Yeah, getting judged always sucks but when it comes from a doctor it is even worse. Must be the authority figure thing. I mean, no matter how much you have researched and know on the subject, when someone in a white coat comes and tells me otherwise it always makes me second-guess myself for a minute.
I mean, my first OB told me no woman was able to withstand the pain of labor. Gawd. How did we ever make it until they invented anaesthetics, right? But still I had stop and consider the possibility that I was insane... like a child talking to an adult.
And I know what you mean by shutting down. For me, it's because I get this feeling, like, "if I really have to explain myself to you then I think you just don't deserve an explanation, or you probably wouldn't understand it, or you most likely wouldn't even try to understand it, because you would get all defensive..."
So, as for what I think you should do, just never go to that doctor again, I suppose. And don't bother arguing. Anything you said to him would have been disregarded as hearsay from a layperson anyway, so save yourself the trouble. You don't have to convince anyone else in order to be right.
Good luck and all the best!
I agree. Also, if you are going to be delaying or skipping vaccines you might as well get use to having to defend your decision. Just sayin.
also, because your doctor knows that the flu--yes, just the little ol' flu--kills tens of thousands of people each year in the US. (That's nearly as many as many deaths as caused by breast cancer.) But your child can be vaccinated and protected from getting it...and also from then spreading it to other people who can't be vaccinated due to legit medical reasons.
I really don't see a rationalization for wanting to throat punch someone who is trying to keep your child from dying.
I'm not sure I would want a Pedi that didn't push for the current evidence based practices. It's part of that doc's (or NP, or PA) job to advocate for your child and to recommend that parents follow medical guidelines.
You have absolutely every right to make the decision that you feel is best for your child...but you can't expect everyone to shrug and go "oh, okay, la la la". Especially when your decision goes against all of the doc's training.
With that said.... it does completely suck that you felt judged for your decision.
Sorry for my PNR yesterday. I so appreciate all of your feedback and support. It makes me feel like I made the right decision by keeping my feelings on this to myself. We will never see this doctor again (unless it is an emergency).
It just makes me so angry sometimes to continually be judged for making good choices for my son's health care. I am glad to know I am not the only one who has felt like this.
Hi Steph&Harry08,
Without going into huge elaborate detail (I am at work right now, and don't have access to any sources), I feel that the flu is something that a healthy immune system can ward off easily using proper nutrition and natural herbs such as camu camu & bovine colstrum. To many vaccinations at an early age is dangerous to a baby's developing immune system and brain health. I feel the body should be given a chance to delevop a natural immunity to flu without interfernece from toxins and chemicals in the blood stream.
Also with so many strains of the flu virus out there it is hard to vaccinate against it. Who's to say that if I do vaccinate against one strain of the virus then take him out in public, and accidently expose him to a different strain (b/c it's never something you know about until it's to late) his already lowered immune defenses would be made worse and he would end up hospitalized. It's a catch 22. No one wants their baby to be sick with the flu, and every parent has a right to do what they feel is best to protect him/her against it.
This is the thing though, you are getting judged because the doctor (and most people) DON"T think you are "making good choices". You are choosing to go against a recommendation so you should expect to get judged on it. If you are going to get "so angry" every time you are judged you are going to be wasting a lot of time and energy. You have made your decision and all decisions come with consequences. Suck it up, Buttercup!
nice rhyme dear. I will suck it up as you suggest, and know that I am making the right choice for us.
Bovine Colostrum and camu camu.
I see.
Honestly? You sound like you've done very little research and I'm glad the doctor took the time to attempt to change your mind. Good for them for doing solid public health outreach.
Can you site your sources?
I am the first one to prefer to go natural in fixing what ails my kids.
Gotta cold? OJ, vaporizer, lots of rest and it will pass. Sprained your ankle? Ice and elevation. Headache? cool wash cloth and a nap.
Vaccinations? I defer to the professionals on that, and I can't cure a bad case of the flu...which kills people. Kills people. The idea of my passing along something that could potentially kill someone that is immune compromised is just more than I can take.
She would love to but she is at work. You know with internet access enough for the bump but not for her "sources"
Yikes, it seems as though judgement is contiuned everywhere I go. Here are a few of the internet resources I can provide at this time, as I am on my work computer:
https://www.articlecity.com/articles/health/article_366.shtml
https://chetday.com/noflushots.htm
https://www.infowars.com/australia-bans-flu-vaccines-in-children-after-vomiting-fevers-seizures/?
https://w3.newsmax.com/blaylock/1.cfm
https://www.natures-health-foods.com/camu-berry.html
I really hate being judged, and I understand that you are all entitiled to your opinion but this is the end of my responding as far as this topic goes as I no longer want to deal with your negativity on my personal parenting decisions. Flame away.. My own fault for posting unpopular opions on a public forum.
Ok so just so you know, and I think it is important, THAT you know... none of these are scientific articles.
Absolutely this. It's great that people have access to information the way we do now, but the inability to weed through the crappy sources to get to credible ones is something many people do not possess. If you are going to go against 4 years of medical school, 4 years of internship and residency, and additional years of fellowship for a specialty such as peds or family practice...at least pick a source better than those the OP listed.
I judge the hell out of you for declining it, too. The flu isn't a joke. The flu kills tens of thousands every. year. and most of those are infants, young children and the elderly.
Aside from that? THere are people who legitimately can't have a flu shot due to allergy reasons. And there are the people who are immunocompromised and for whom catching the flu is more than a couple of days of sniffly noses or some diarrhea. For those people, the flu means hospitalization and maybe never coming home again.
I find that most anti-vaxxers are thinking only of themselves, and never about the fact that their decisions to not vaccinate based on extremist articles impact the lives of other people and can result int he deaths of other babies.
THat is truly a miracle baby you have there. She is absolutely beautiful. Look at all those rolls! On a micropremie! Well done mama.
THANKS! she was 1lb 4 oz at birth - 22w 5d - she is our miracle. Shes a happy plump 11 1/2 lbs now - I eat a lot of doughnuts so my BM is nice and fatty! lol
adrielegorburu:
your daughter is absolutely gorgeous!
Make a pregnancy ticker
On very excellent piece of advice I've seen is that when doing research, you should stick with websites that end in .org or .gov and not .com.
I'd judge you too for not vaccinating. Flu kills nearly as many people each year as breast cancer. Would you get vaccinated for breast cancer if you could? Then why not flu? Moreover, it's not just about you and your child. It is about other people who cannot protect themselves such as infants, the elderly or (ahem) cancer patients (looks down at sig). I'm taking my child for his flu shot tomorrow. Not only do I want him protected, I need to protect myself.
I am a runner, knitter, scientist, DE-IVF veteran, and stage III colon cancer survivor.
At the end of the day you are the parent and you get to make the decision. However, your rationale is based on spurious sources and a complete lack of understanding of immunology or medicine. That is not a personal indictment - you are presumably not a scientist or a doctor.
I suspect that your expertise in whatever you do for a living is substantial, and you would not want someone outside of your field to cavalierly assert they know more than you do - they probably don't!
And yet that is what you are doing to your pedi. S/he has been trained for more than a decade to make recommendations based on evidence, and you trot in with your questionable sources and basically say you know more about the medical field than s/he does. Then you get so upset when s/he tries to educate you on a matter they know infinitely more than you about and want to "throat punch" the doc.
I don't know. It seems like a total asinine response, IMO.
If you have concerns, ask questions. But at least respect the responses of the professionals to whom you entrust your child's care. It is likely they actually DO know more than you do.
I am a runner, knitter, scientist, DE-IVF veteran, and stage III colon cancer survivor.
Ding Ding Ding ~ For the win!
FWIW, I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt until you gave the links and rationale (all it takes is some herbs and a good diet to ward off the flu!), and then I promptly did a ::HEADDESK::
Don't worry about getting the vaccine. My preemie DD who has a compromised immune system will get it so she doesn't give it to your kid as we pass in the grocery store. Let her shoulder the responsibility of your "I know better than a medical professional because I read holistic blogs" decision.
FFS.
BFP #3 via cancelled IUI ~ C (2lb 3oz; HELLP) 5/16/11
BFP #4 via the natural (free!) way ~ E (8lb 11oz) 9/13/12
Just had to jump in here and say WOW. That is truly amazing!!
I mostly agree with you on this topic, so this isn't intended to be snark. It's meant to be helpful. That said:
It is always, always, always better to find the study that an article mentions or a medical journal article in accordance with it than to cite it or trust it alone. Many of the articles on PubMed are free, and even the ones you have to pay for contain a free abstract. This way you can interpret it directly yourself rather than risk somebody attacking your source for being secondary, as well as avoid the risk of a secondary source referring to a study that has been retracted or accidentally or intentionally mis-applying numbers. You can also then find out who did the study and look into them to see if they are being funded by a vaccine manufacturer, an herbal remedy distributor, etc. You don't know if chetday, hypothetically, might be a total nut job, be CEO of Vitamin Shoppe, or what. If you look at the data they use, however, you will learn even more than what their article states, much of the time. If you can't get the research itself for free, try to find a study like it or find additional sources that also reference it.
Citing a journal like "Vaccine" or an actual government recommendation won't always make people take you seriously, because the cognitive dissonance around a lot of mainstream medical stuff is so strong. Sometimes, though, it will at least get people to stop and think a moment. I have a relative who gave her baby the rotavirus vax because the CDC recommends it, so "it must be safe." She tried, politely, to persuade me I should do the same. Then I pointed out that the FDA says specifically to NOT give it to infants because of the risk of intussusception. She thought for a moment, said that it is strange that two government agencies have a contradictory stance, and said how she could see why that worries me. I'm pretty happy with that--I don't want to change everyone's mind, I just want my choices to be respected and to not be attacked as a baby-hater or whatever for not being 100% mainstream about these things. It sounds like that's what you want, too, and I think digging deeper with your sources can help with that in addition to perhaps deepening your understanding of some things. : )
FYI, in a given year, a flu vax offers between 17% and 54% protection. You never know til next year how effective this year's vax really is, and a lot of this blaming non-vax moms for sick babies is scientifically unsupportable. If 100% of the US population got the vax in a year with 17% protection, there would be...17% protection.
Also, you cannot possibly know how many people the flu kills in a year when even the CDC itself does not know:
https://voices.washingtonpost.com/checkup/2010/08/cdc_revises_flu_death_estimate.html
Quote:
How many people does the flu kill each year in the United States? The number you always hear is about 36,000. Well, federal health officials on Thursday released some new calculations that conclude that number is misleading. The actual number can vary a lot from year to year, ranging from as few as about 3,000 to as many as about 49,000, according to a new analysis from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And:
In the United States, it has only been linked directly to perhaps about 12,000 [deaths].
I am not saying the flu is never dangerous or that it cannot kill anybody. I'm saying that you are just as wrong for making people who decline the flu vax out to be mass murderers as a daycare provider with no allergies to the shot would be for declining the flu vax. There is a middle ground, there is a large moral gray area, and I don't think anybody here hates babies or "thinks only of themselves."