My Kid Got The Swine Flu Vax

(First off: I'm making it my personal mission to use the word "swine" in a blog post title every autumn, as evidenced by today's post and this one.  I seek out the challenges in life, you know?)

Today, my 3-year-old was vaccinated against both seasonal and H1N1 flu.  It's unlikely that you, gentle reader, will have a lukewarm reaction to that sentence.  Most likely, you will fall into one of two camps: you'll either be wildly supportive of me, or else you'll condemn me.  Here's why I did it:

Have you ever had the flu before?  Not a bad cold, not a mild virus, but have you ever really had influenza?  I have.  More than once, and more than twice.  And you know what?  It is seriously awful.  If you contract it, odds are you won't die from it, but I was so sick I was afraid I would die - and then I was afraid I wouldn't.  I caught the flu each year with regularity throughout high school and most of college - until one year, it dawned on me: hey, they have a vaccination for this. 

I got the shot, and I didn't get the flu that year.  I kept it up every year after that, and I never once got the flu - except for 2005, when a predicted shortage of flu vaccine caused health care practitioners to reserve their doses for high-risk patients, which I was not.  And on a business trip that February, I came down with it.  Sweating, freezing, wheezing, and vomiting in my hotel room, I eventually landed in the emergency room.  Oh, and after flu season that year, it turns out they actually had a surplus of vaccine.

I've made sure that Pumpkin got a seasonal flu shot every season since she was old enough to get it, and today she got her third one.  But this year, flu season is especially alarming to me: the combination of widespread H1N1 and my too-young-to-be-vaccinated-against-it newborn leaves me quaking in my boots.  If my infant can't be protected against it, I at least want the rest of my family - all of us exposed to God only knows what each day - to minimize the risk of contracting it.  Our healthy bodies are probably strong enough to endure it.  But my 8-week-old's?  I don't know, and I don't want to find out.

So, at her 3-year-old check-up today, our pediatrician laid out our options, and asked what I wanted to do.  After a quick phone call consult with the hubs, we decided to have our daughter vaccinated with the seasonal flu injection and the H1N1 nasal mist - the only combination that allowed us to do both at the same time (their office only had H1N1 in mist form; the seasonal was available in both mist and injection, but we wouldn't have been able to get two mists in the same day - they would have had to be weeks apart, and I was concerned about availability in the coming months).

Was it the right thing to do?  I don't know, and I suppose only time will tell - after all, a vaccination isn't a guarantee.  I *feel* like it was the right thing, and as a parent, that's the best I can do.  I know the chances of my children contracting the flu and dying from it are slim, but if I can do something to minimize the chances of my kids even being sick with it, I feel better.         

An original DC Metro Moms post.  Diana obsesses about issues great and small (but mostly small) at Caffeinated.