Why I, personally, have chosen to NOT vaccinate my son.

I could write a book on this subject, but there are already decent books out there, and I doubt anyone would listen to someone without a PHD in medicine anyway...lol

I am not going to quote statistics or books or articles here...everyone is fully capable of doing their own research.  I will recommend Dr. Sear's book on vaccines because he talks about each vaccine individually, and I know many mamas who have chosen to selectively vaccinate or follow his delayed schedule, which works for them.

So, I'll start by saying that before I conceived my son, I believed what I had been taught - that vaccines were good, and that people who refused to vaccinate their children were either ignorant, or religious zealots, or both.

Then, I met my midwife, and through her I met many happy, healthy families who chose to not vaccinate.  During my journey towards my un-medicated, painless, joyful home birth, I learned to trust my body, to trust my instincts, and to question every belief I held.

My first question about vaccines was, "do they work?"  And the answer I found was, "sometimes."  Booster shots are necessary because vaccinated immunity can wear off, or never take; whereas true immunity, from exposure to the actual disease, usually lasts a lifetime.

Our immune systems are not separate from the rest of the systems in our body.  One of the flaws of our medical system, and of science in general, is that they look at pieces and bits and try to extrapolate what they learn about the bits to the whole.  Another flaw of the medical system is that it focuses on treatment rather than prevention.  Yet another is that healthy people simply don't go to the clinic or the hospital anywhere near as often as unhealthy people do.  Doctors, nurses, and other medical workers live in a world full of disease and damaged systems, usually of anonymous people that they see once a year or less when they are healthy.  They don't look at the body as a whole, they look at symptoms and do their best to deduce a diagnosis and treatment.  And they get it wrong.  Often.

Vaccination is supposed to be about prevention, but it doesn't always work.  The best way to prevent disease, and to recover quickly from it, is to keep the immune system and the body strong with enough sleep, enough water, enough nutrients from whole foods, enough exposure to the sun on a daily basis (approximately 20 minutes plus time for our bodies to absorb the vitamin D our skin produces before showering,) limiting sugar, animal products, and other processed crap, and enough exercise.  The medical world would rather sell insulin pumps than teach type 2 diabetics how to eat and exercise properly, for many reasons, and many people would rather pop pills and even get shots and surgery than change their lifestyles.

Vaccines are dangerous.  That has been proven without a doubt to my mind.  There are far more deaths and serious complications resulting from vaccination than there are deaths or permanent injuries due to the diseases vaccines are supposed to protect us from.

Herd immunity is a dangerous myth.  The idea that every one should be vaccinated to protect the few who can't be is flawed.  First, it relies on the idea that immune people can't carry a disease that they are immune to.  That is false.  Recently vaccinated people are far more dangerous to people with compromised immune systems than an unvaccinated person could ever be.

Even if we did eradicate all the disease that we vaccinate for (which we CAN TREAT,) different diseases would replace them.  We already have terrifying superbugs that we can't treat because of the excessive use of antibiotics, antivirals, and other drugs.

It also promotes the idea that unvaccinated children are disease factories, which is ludicrous.  My son is almost two and a half years old, and over his lifetime so far he has had a stomach bug for 48 hours, and a cold twice for 24 hours or less.  Meanwhile, I've had all of my shots, and before I went vegan, I was sick for two weeks out of every month.  Since I've changed my diet, I have only been sick for 24 hours or less two or three times - still more often than my son.

Unvaccinated children get sick less frequently than vaccinated children, especially if they are also breastfed.  Breastfed babies have their mother's immune system until their own immune system fully develops, around age 2.  That means, whatever we are immune to, they are.  And often, our breasts will give them the antibodies they need even when our own immune systems fail to do the same for us.  Nursing mamas often get sick while their babies remain healthy.

I also learned that diseases were already on the decline before vaccines were introduced, and in some cases, vaccines caused the incidences of certain diseases to increase.  Nutrition, clean water, and hygiene improved before vaccines were invented, and were already helping people's bodies fight the diseases.  Studies that "prove" vaccines are effective don't take other lifestyle or environmental factors into account.  They often are funded by groups that profit from the use of vaccines.

The most frightening thing is the preservatives, known carcinogens, toxins, and things that we don't know exactly what effect they have...in quantities too high for comfort, injected into the bloodstream of developing infants and toddlers, whose tiny bodies and high metabolisms make them much more susceptible than adults to adverse reactions.  And the vaccines we have now have not been around long enough to know what effect they will have in the long term.

From every thing that I have researched, it is my belief that the chemicals in vaccines, combined with the toxins in our foods, our environments, our clothes, our cosmetics, sunscreen, bug spray, soap, our water, the very air we breath, combine to weaken or wreck our immune systems, and disturb the chemistry of our blood and our brains, leading to an increase in every single problem a human can have.  Diabetes, Multiple Sclerosis, Cancer, Lupus, Autism, Depression, ADHD, and diseases we are giving new names to every day are constantly on the rise.  KIDS have all this stuff now!  The amount and frequency of vaccines has increased dramatically in the last twenty years, and so has the amount and frequency of health problems of the children who are injected.

One thing I have learned is that there is never just ONE cause.  But some things, when eliminated, can make a world of difference.  My son and I eat nutritious whole foods, organic when possible, drink plenty of liquids, limit the amount of toxic chemicals in our air and on our skin, get exercise outside every day, and give our bodies enough sleep, keeping them as strong as we can.  That's working for us, as it works for many, MANY other families.

I'm not anti-vaccine - I think they have their place.  In countries with poor access to clean water and nutritious food, and available treatment, vaccines can help.  But this isn't one of those countries, and vaccines have no place in my family.