Vaccinations

I took Ethan to get his 4-year vaccinations on Tuesday afternoon. He had to get MMR in one arm, and DTaP-IPV in the other. He did most of his crying in the car when we got to the doctor's surgery. He was afraid it would "really, really hurt" but then afterwards he said "Hey, it didn't hurt that much ... I was really brave, eh Mumma?" ... which he was :-)

I watched out for any reaction that evening, but there was nothing. I couldn't even see the prick marks from the needles. But he did complain of not feeling well and had a slight fever. I gave him Pamol and he slept well. The next day he was at mum's for the day and she said he wasn't quite himself. Then last night (this is 2 days after the vaccination), Rob was giving Ethan a bath and called me in to look. He had a HUGE red patch on his right arm (the DTaP-IPV) and it was swollen and very hot. Rob put a cold flannel on it for a while. We took his temperature and it was normal, so we gave him some Pamol for the pain in his arm, and he went to bed. He slept until 8am this morning and came out looking quite hot. His arm was still red and hot. I took him up to see the nurse again at 9am and she said it was a reportable adverse reaction (I knew it would be, since Tyler had a reaction to the third MeNZB vaccine and his red patch was about 1/4 of the size of Ethan's one). She also said it was most unusual to react 2 days after the vaccine (it usually happens within 6h). She drew a line around it and if it spreads too much we have to go back to see the doctor and get some antihistamine.

The whole thing is quite interesting for me. In my job as a medical writer, I specialise in the area of Vaccines and Viral Infections. But when something like this happens to your own child, you feel really differently about it. Of course there is no way I would refuse to vaccinate my kids because I know that it is important, but it doesn't make it easy.