Parenthood Woes

This morning after I adjusted Benton, yes he loves to get adjusted, Justin noticed white spots on his nails. The nails, eyes, and tongue tell a lot about what's going on inside the body. Different marks, lines, colorations, and dents tell about different organs and mineral imbalances. White marks happen to be a possible zinc or trace mineral deficiency or an imbalance in the ratio of the minerals. These minerals are vital for proper immune system function. I say this to put emphasis on the point that health is forever changing, especially in the time of childhood. Childhood is an extremely important time in immune system development. This is when the body comes into contact with the most germs and is building up a defense against them for future reference because many encounters are on a first time basis. In order to make a healthy adult, the child has to come into contact with these agents and learn to fight them off. You are not doing your child any favors by constantly keeping them on an antibiotics or keeping Tylenol doses constantly coming towards their face. Fevers aren't bad. I don't mean to let your child run a fever of above 103 degrees without a cool bath or considering another option, but the body is designed to kill off invaders by increasing the internal temperature of the body. Many parents freak out over a low grade fever and there is really no reason to fret.

Vaccinations are one of the biggest topics of the first year of childhood.  Whether to vaccinate or not? Should I delay and play catch up? What are the benefits? What are the risks? Will not vaccinating keep my child from going to daycare, public school, playing sports, etc? There are a lot of questions and whenever someone asks me my opinion I am always careful in sharing my opinion....Yes, that is highly unusual and extremely difficult for me! I try to focus more on the parent's thoughts and worries and the research and education that the parent has done to form an informed decision. It's imperative to weigh out the pros and cons in any major decision, especially this one. If a parent has done the research and made an informed decision to vaccinate and is willing to take the risks, I'm not going to cold shoulder them. It's their child! I have had to make those decisions with my child and we have chosen not to vaccinate. The risks are minimal. We haven't taken him out of the county and he hasn't been around any illegal aliens. My reply when people ask me if I'm concerned he is at risk is always: Who is he going to catch all of these diseases from if everyone else is vaccinated? Another important point I want to make is just because you start to vacccinate doesn't mean you have to continue. You can change your mind at any point along the way and there is nothing harmful about this.

One of the most challenging things for us was finding a pediatrician to work with us on the non-vaccination choice we made for Benton's health. I have finally found one, but that doesn't mean that I didn't have to go though several before him. Let's face it, if you don't vaccinate, you don't see the pediatrician much and if everyone chose not to, where would their business go?  Ultimately I am Benton's mother and luckily we still live in a country where I do get to control most things about his health (don't get me started on politics, that's a whole different blog). I'm not worried about any of the things that not vaccinating will keep Benton from doing because there really aren't any. My dad is a public school superintendent and even though we have different views on child rearing topics from time to time, I know the things that public schools have to allow to avoid a law suit. If a person says that something is related to their beliefs or religion, that's such a hot topic that no one is going to touch it with a ten foot pole. I mean what do you think happened to prayer in school, saying the pledge of allegiance, etc.???? I encourage you to do research on religious belief and philosophical exemptions. It's a matter of filling out a little paperwork. I had to fill out a sheet for Benton's day care and that was the end of it. No big deal!

If parent's do chose to vaccinate, I encourage them to prep the child's immune system to get them ready for the vaccination before hand. This will help with the child's fever, discomfort, and protect the DNA from mutations. At least 2 weeks prior to a vaccination, give the child daily doses of B12, B6, and Glutathionol for protection of the proteins in the DNA strand ( http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=50746, info about Glutathionol). I dose these out individually for each patient as the need is different person to person. We do a lot of nutrition in our office so this is not out of the norm. This will get the child ready for the vaccine and help them tolerate it better. It also helps ease the parent's worries of the many 'what ifs?' that every parent has, no matter what your decisions are. My purpose is to help people and provide support, not scare people or intimidate people into making any certain decision and this should be the purpose of your pediatrician as well. Remember they work for you and you as the parent have the ultimate say. Parenthood isn't easy, especially if you are a first time parent, but eventually we all realize that they are tough little people. We have made our decision and we have been pleased with it and the little person that we made the decision for. He is the healthiest child in his day care room and extremely smart. My biggest fear as a parent is interfering with something that he was designed to be. He is truly amazing and I know this world will be a better place for him being here. I just want to guide and direct and keep him on track. I know all of the greatness is inside him just waiting for the right time to be released. Far be it for me to interfere with a greater plan. This is the decision that we have made as parents. I'm not saying anyone's decision was wrong, but I feel confident in saying that this was the right decision for us.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2004/12/29/vaccination-schedule-part-one.aspx. This is a link for an alternative vaccination schedule that many parents choose to follow. It spaces out some does and delays some others to not overwhelm the child's system. It also has some very good information that goes along with what I have been talking about.