Would you like a little Mommy Guilt with that?
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Probably every parent out there has fallen into the guilt trap. We can spend a lot of time second guessing decisions we’ve made. And, sometimes choices we make lead to consequences we might not have anticipated.
While this isn’t a new occurrence for me, it was just this past week that had me second guessing choices made when it came to the health of the boys.
What’s the great guilt generator of the moment?
To vaccinate or not to vaccinate…..
Since P had a reaction at 15 months to the administration of MMR and Varicella vaccinations, I have been a bit more cautious about which vaccinations the boys get and when they get them. D is still ‘catching up’ to where most kids his age are with vaccinations.
With all the chaos of the move to Alaska, Little J missed his 4 month ‘well child’ visit. At his 6 month visit with the pediatrician we selected, I explained my desire to vaccinate off the regular schedule. Some illnesses (e.g. polio) are less of a threat and I am quite comfortable with pushing back the vaccination. Others (e.g. Hepatitis B) are diseases a young child not in a day care setting is unlikely to encounter. And, there are those like varicella that I’d rather have the boys get natural immunity through exposure (assuming it can happen before puberty.)
Given my personal history of respiratory issues (allergies and asthma), I have always wanted the boys to have protection for anything that can strike the respiratory system.
When Little J kept having a fever that responded to meds but just wouldn’t break, we went off to the pediatrician’s office. Much to my surprise, his temperature had spiked to 105.1 when we went for his visit. After the initial flurry of administering meds (that he kept spitting out), the pediatrician looked at his vaccination record. What had escaped my notice was that he hadn’t had the pneumococcal vaccination.
The comment that there was concern of bacterial infection with higher temperatures, especially since he was lacking this important vaccination, laid the framework for a little mommy guilt to start building.
A visit to the lab at Providence hospital followed by seeing another pediatrician in the practice yielded the news that Little J did have significantly elevated white blood cell count. While the actual culture to verify bacterial growth was still being grown, the course of treatment was an injection of a broad spectrum antibiotic (actually 2 injections as his smaller size meant ‘spreading the wealth’ so to speak.) This decision was reached as the combination of high fever, high white blood cell count and lack of the vaccination made him a prime candidate for a systemic infection.
Neither pediatrician said I was a bad mom for not having him completely on the vaccination schedule laid out by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Yet, I sure did feel like the mommy guilt was starting to pile high.
After 2 days of antibiotic shots, the prognosis was that the culture didn’t show any bacteria growth. The pediatrician we saw on that Saturday indicated that it could have just been a viral infection after all and to watch him for a return of fever. Thankfully, it never returned and he improved just in time for me to have a few bad days.
All this to say…. next time you start to take a heaping serving of mommy guilt on the side, remember that you are not alone.
Feel free to share any mommy guilt you have going on (or have had in the past.) I have a feeling this won’t be the last time for me.
Mommy guilt is always on tap. 🙂 I just try hard to stay away from the spigot! Keep it turned off, It usually creates leaky pipes around here. 🙂 For the shots – we did them all with our first son, and saw a reaction,and battled the antibiotics for every little ear infection. With Jon, we only did the ear infection dash once, and confirmed with our pediatrician that they will go away in a couple of days. We tried it for the next one, and he never had another ear infection. Same with shots, when learned that if they do go overseas or such, they have to have them all up to date at that time – and they can get them, their bodies grown and healthy – and handle the effects better. I had to have so many shots in the Coast Guard – I count it as the worst part of boot camp. Vivid memories – even 23 years ago. 🙂 We did get the boys the chicken pox shot last year, as we are in a new town, and Jon had not had pox or the shot. Nathan had the shot and 2 pox spots. I have Shingles from the course of having horrid horrid pox as a kid. 🙂 BTW, I have two cousins, and 1 friend who have autistic qualities after the mmr shot. Our friend has been clinically labeled with Autism, our cousins are still in the Asperger Spectrum.
Tristan ~ I have the same problem. We have photos from 35mm for the eldest son and some from the other boys. But, by far the pictures have been digital for the past 8 years. Around the holidays, I usually get some made into prints when Walgreens runs a super special on prints.What I do (and I know you do as well) is put up photos of the kids in action on the blog. One friend has done the make your blog into a book thing each year. Plus, she does a photo book of their family each year. Kind of the yearbook from school thing. I'm going to look into it for the future as compiling it all digitally for someone else to print sounds less time consuming than traditional scrapbooking. Although I do have scrapbooking supplies in house (which just came out when D and I put together a new lapbook I need to blog about…)
Mommy guilt strikes often here. The most recent was when I realized I have not printed photos of most of my children. The first and second were before digital cameras, so we have some printed photos. And we've done a few family shots over the years (very few), but babies 3, 4, and 5 really are mostly digital babies. I need to print some pictures and stick them in an album!!! There is no time for scrapbooking, but I 'should' at least have some pictures printed, right? Sigh….