Vaccines made my child sick!!!

Despite mine and Her's initial worries about being parents, we've managed to keep Firstborn alive to see the ripe old age of fifteen months. Imagine our surprise when we've neither dropped him on his head nor choked him to death with chunks of homemade baby food. For fifteen months straight! Yay us!

Image credit: CDC Public Health Image Library (public domain)

As a new human being, if you make it to fifteen months, you're rewarded with the privilege of a dose of the dreaded MMR-vaccine.¹ Last week was Firstborn's big day.

Now, with all of his previous vaccines (repeated rounds of conjugate vaccines for pneumococcus, diphteria, tetanus, pertussis, polio and HiB), he's caught a fever and had to stay home from daycare for a couple of days.² With me being a student and Her filling the role of the breadwinner in our family, I'm usually the one who's had to stay at home with him, listening to him nag for mommy and "boop!", which is the word he uses to request, nay, command, a round of breastfeeding, said breast of course situated all across town and not home until four, or later depending on the workload.³ They're long days, I can promise ya.

This time we had taken our precautions. We'd had the appointment moved to a thursday, which is the day She covers a local nursing home instead of being at the office, meaning she could finish early so we could both go. I had mandatory stuff at school the day after, so she'd cleared her itinerary so that she could stay home with him. Then his fever could run its course during the weekend and none of us would have to take out any sick days. We felt like real competent parents for being able to plan this out so smoothly. Backs were padded. Smug looks were exchanged. Self-righteous smiles were smiled.

We showed up at the health station, and Firstborn was weighed and measured as usual. Before giving the shot, the nurse probed for a couple of developmental milestones, and held a mini-lecture on nutrition, how we should talk to him to stimulate his language development, encourage motor skills etc. etc. We felt kind of interrogated, I guess most parents do when someone questions your ability to rear your own young, but overall we felt that we had it all down. She then told us a lot of stuff we already knew about the vaccine; that it is a live attenuated vaccine that is delayed until fifteen months to allow the child's immune system to mature enough to incur a full blown immunologic response, stuff like that. At this point we were both starting to get impatient, but none of us wanted to play the "We ARE doctors, you know"-card, so we listened politely and nodded in all the right places.

— Now, it's common to have a small reaction to the shot with fever and malaise ...

Listen, lady, we know all this, we've been through this like six or seven times already. I mean come on, can't you tell that we're a pair of competent parents with their shit severely together over here?

— ... about a week after the actual shot.

Oh. Right. A week. Sure, we knew that.

So here we are, a week later. His fever set in 7 days later on the dot, and is currently cruising between 39 and 40°C. He's hot as a bulb, and all he can manage is to watch TV. We've propped him up with pillows and he sits for long whiles watching nature shows where David Attenborough marvels at the beauty of the okapi and other exotic animals. Occasionally he'll raise a hand and point to a particularly fascinating specimen on the screen, but that's the limit of his interaction. Totally not like him at all, but it's actually kind of nice to see him so sedate for a change.

Lesson learned and archived for future offspring.

¹ Happily I don't have to go off on a rant about how misguided the anti-vaccine movement is, as it is already all over the news.
² Our daycare observes a strict no-fever policy, even testing the kids' temperatures during the day and ordering the parents to come and get them if it rises above 38°C during the day. They're completely crazy, but what can you do.
³ She works as a general practitioner at a three-doctor practice. She does well. Our economy works comfortably on a single income, which bodes well for my pocket money when I start working. Someday. Real soon now. Promise.