Anti-vaccination comments are explicitly not welcome and will be deleted

[ailbhe]

I had to take Emer for her preschool boosters today. It was horrific. She didn't want to do it. I carried her; she got down to walk a couple of times but each time tried to run away. She actually deliberately hit me, on purpose, not because she was flailing or didn't know what she was doing, but because I was going to hurt her and she needed to defend herself. I carried her to the surgery (only about 500 yards, if that) on my back, and had to drag her from the waiting room to the nurse's office; she was actually kicking and screaming. I couldn't get her jacket off so I had to tip her over my knee and pull down her tights to expose her thighs. I then had to hold her legs still for the injections, and I couldn't - one was ok but the second one in the other leg was too difficult and she ended up with an inch-long needle-scratch before the nurse got the needle in.

I haven't abused her like that since she was an infant and I had to force a mask-like thing over her face and have her inhale foreign substances, or since she was an infant and I had to force her to swallow antibiotics which she gagged up and I had to force her to reswallow them. The inhaler and the antibiotics were for the same illness. That was a fun time.

I am shattered by the experience. I cannot imagine the damage this has done to her trust in me and can only hope we can get over it somehow.

She knew I planned to hurt her, she tried to escape, and I tracked her down.

If I didn't believe we have a basic social duty to get the children vaccinated I don't think I could have done it.

Diphtheria, tetanus, polio (Rob's paternal grandmother had polio), whooping cough (I had whooping cough), Hib (pneumonia and meningitis - my mother's sister died of meningitis, my sister almost died of pneumonia from an infection she caught from her unvaccinate-able child), measles (I had measles), mumps, rubella (I had rubella).

I am going to eat mini-marshmallows until I feel better.

Comments

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Argh. Much sympathy. (I've been grateful for years to have you blazing the path for me, so that I'm a little bit more prepared for the possibilities that come with an older child.)

I hope carrying her wasn't too devastating on your body - you've already said how hard it was on your psyche.

Wishing you a soothing cup of tea, and a Responsible Mother medal.

[ailbhe]

You'll see above someone who found that *not* warning her child was the best course for her child. Of course, with my two, if I said we were going to the doctor - or even just "out" - but not why, I'd very quickly have to lie outright or reveal all.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

*nod* This time, I told M that we were going to go get him shots (which turned out to be a lie, actually. He didn't.). I'm planning to do so for the next ones as well. I'm hoping that the lure of doing something he likes afterward will be enough.

I used to give Tylenol beforehand, but having read that it reduces effectiveness, I don't anymore. A didn't seem to mind hers this round, which rather astonished me. Squealing during, and some fussiness after, but over all, not much change from her usual cry hard/laugh hard self.


M needed a blood draw at less than two weeks old, and I remember thinking that this would be the hardest thing I'd do as a mother. Especially because it took them more than one attempt. I stood there, and helped hold him down, and made soothing noises while feeling like I was betraying his infant trust in me. I wanted to cry, I wanted to snatch my baby up and take him away from the mean people...and not doing that, re-asserting rationality, and knowing that doing it this first time was going to set the pattern for all the rest? (There was a lot more at the hospital, but this was the one that I was voluntarily present for. All the rest, I'd been kept away from.)

It doesn't gut me anymore, but rewriting it had me shaking a bit, and wanting to cry all over again.

But what you described? Oh, dear. I think I'd have to rethink whether that first draw was the hardest. Poor Emer. Poor Ailbhe.