I'm a mom to 4 children, my oldest 2 had all their childhood shots, all on time and according to schedule. My oldest is 11 and the second oldest is 8 -- so their infant vaccination schedule was actually different than it is now, now they require more shots at younger ages. My 3rd child was vaccinated up until he was about 3 1/2. My 4th child (who is 3) stopped getting vacciness when he was 4 months old.
When my youngest was 4 months old, he got a series of shots and went into shock for 3 days!! At 4 months old he was smiling and making eye contact. After he received his shots, he became literally non-responsive. He did not smile, he did not cry, he did not make eye contract. He would fuss a tiny bit when he was perhaps hungry - but even then he hardly ate, but that was it. It was very, very scary. I called the pedi as soon as a I realized things just weren't normal and told it was "with the range of normal" -- uh, whatever, that was not even close to normal. The "theory" is that he had an allergic reaction to a component of the shot -- I don't know what it was, but it sure scared the life out of me! For 3 days we prayed he would return to normal, become responsive again - it was a long 3 days.
That is when we stopped vaccinating all the children.
I never worried w/ my older kids (when they were younger), perhaps part of it was because they handled the shots well, but after our experience with the baby, we decided to educate ourselves. We read, spoke to other parents, spoke to several doctors, researched on the internet, and then some.
I learned how many vaccines were not "tested" for long periods of time, that they were just developed, and given to children across the world - that concerned me. I noticed a huge difference in the vaccination schedule between my oldest child (born in 1996) and my youngest child (born in 2004) --- I couldn't believe how many more shots were added!
When we told our pedi we were no longer going to vaccinate, we were asked to leave the practice. That bothered me, but I respected that they had their standards, just as I had mine. We found a new dr in Rowlett who we just love and he is completely ok with us choosing not to vaccinate.
IN FACT, the first day I went into his office 2 years ago, I met a mother w/ a 15 year old boy w/ severe autism. He could not even walk on his own, and his body size was about that of a 9 or 10 year old boy --- he had been given a bad batch of vacccines several years ago (it was a nationwide thing) that caused his condition. I think she said it was the pertussis vaccine? I don't recall, but sitting there in that office w/ her showed me that perhaps I was making the right decision for my family.
I believe the vaccination schedule has gotten way out of hand, and new vaccines are coming out too soon, and "reformulated vaccines" are coming out too soon as well w/o the proper time for evaluation and research on the side effects.
Case in point -- Gardisil comes out -- lets all vaccinate our girls -- lets make it stand mandatory for public school girls -- wait a minute, side effects -- wait a minute, girl goes into coma, wait a minute girl gets blood clot and dies.
True there are side effects to anything, and apparently "death" can be a side effect of any vaccination. But the Gardisil vaccine was given to a group of girls ages 9-14 about 6 years ago - and that was it (and my numbers may be a year or two off) -- but point being ---- none of the girls it was intially given too are child bearing age -- so we know it protects them from one strain of HPV, but we do not know the long term affects of the drug, we do not know how it affects reproduction, how it may affect fetal birth defects.
Why bring that up? To prove a point, may vacciness are not tested long enough, when a vaccine is reformulated you may never even know. "We" are mandating vaccines or giving vaccines to our children w/o doing the proper research and testing on them. "We" do not know the long term effects of many of these vaccines.
So do I feel ok no-longer vaccinating my children?
Absolutely!
(oh , and yes, non-vaccinated children may attend public school, in Texas you can choose not to vaccinate based on religious, medical, or philisophical exemption -- once the exemption form is filled out)