VAXBaby 01: Getting started researching vaccines

Congratulations on making this investment in you and your family. I expect this series may play a big part in shaping the decisions you make about child’s health. By now you’ve realized there’s a lot of information out there regarding all the different facets of raising a healthy child: what to feed them, how they should sleep, how to discipline them. These days, there are growing numbers of parents who are putting more effort into researching vaccines. When I was a baby, they weren’t such a big deal—I might have gotten four or five of them. Nowadays, health officials in the United States are suggesting children receive over 70 vaccines by their teenage years—many of them for diseases you’ve probably never heard of.

I can understand why this makes a lot of new parents nervous. If you are a mother, you are asked to make all sorts of changes to your lifestyle during pregnancy to ensure your baby has the best environment in which to form. You probably started eating organic, stopped drinking alcohol and all sorts of other modifications. After you’ve given birth to a perfectly healthy baby, it might feel odd to start injecting them right away with a bunch of pharmaceutical products.