The last round of immunization shots for my precious girl were 8 months ago, and they have definitely crept up on me too soon. I get all panicky around immunization time - I think if I knew without a doubt, that I was definitely doing the best thing possible for my child it wouldn't affect me so much. But I don't have those feelings. I'm very on the fence about immunizations. On the one hand I want her to be protected against serious diseases....but on the other hand, I wonder what the heck she is being injected with and if it will cause serious side effects, allergic reactions, or worst of all, personality altering Autism. I'm not convinced that immunizations are the be-all and end-all and they are perfect and safe, and I sit there in the nurses office praying to God that we are doing what's right for our little girl and that He will protect her.

Not to mention the sheer pain that contorts her face, makes her little body cringe and sends her into shrill screams. Talk about breaking a mother's heart.

Eva had her one year shots on Tuesday which included one for Meningococcal....which also happens to be the one making her terribly sick. She was absolutely fine the day of her shots, but yesterday afternoon it must have hit her like a ton of bricks and she just started wailing. I was in the middle of feeding Brooklyn, so I was trying to pick her up and console and comfort her while shoveling food into Brookie's mouth. Brooklyn was getting frustrated, Eva was screaming and I was running around trying to find something to wipe Brooklyn up with, put his food away etc...I came back to the room to find my baby covered in her own vomit.

I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening trying to cuddle her and comfort her. The meningococcal vaccine can make you have pain, swelling, a headache and overall just plain sore. Eva would cuddle with me but she would also be crying and writhing in pain because she just couldn't get comfortable. It was a lot of effort to lift her head, so she kept flopping over onto the floor or the furniture. When I would finally get her comfortable to fall asleep, she'd sleep in my arms for 30 minutes to an hour, and then wake up screaming in pain. And we'd do the whole routine over again. She also has a pretty raging fever.

My poor girl.

I stayed home from work today to take care of her. It's 10:15 am and she still hasn't woken up for the day. I've been so stressed and worried about her, hoping this is a normal reaction. If not...I did this to her. I made her in all this pain, because I put her through those shots.

Ugh...I friggen hate immunizations!

Eva's 6 month immunization shots were MUCH better than 2 or 4. She was really "off" for a week or so after her other shots, not to mention she had a scream during them that would break your heart in a million pieces. I had tears streaming down my face at the first shots! Luckily Steve was there and was holding her. This time, I was the one holding her. She was all happy and babbling away "ga ga ga" and she babbled right up until the first needle went in. I don't know if it was smaller or something, but her reaction was really delayed and when she cried it wasn't an ear piercing, heart-breaking cry. She did cry though, and she sometimes tries to comfort herself by talking to herself, so she was crying "Waaaaaa!...ga ga ga....waaaaa!....ga ga ga" It was really cute :) But flip her over to the other leg and do two more....ugh, I really hate doing that to my child. Steve and I know how bad they are and we skipped out on our shots about a month ago. We still have to go next month, so we are really going to have to psych ourselves up.

We did give Eva Tylenol this time, 30 minutes before we left, and later in the afternoon when she was a bit cranky. That really seemed to help and she has continued to sleep through the night, only waking up slightly early this morning (8 am). It has been a much better round of shots this time for sure. She still has a hard lump at the injection site. It seems like it would be really painful, but it really doesn't seem to bother her.

On another note, but in the lines of Eva talking to herself (which I LOVE), I took a cute video of her yesterday chatting away in her Jumperoo.

We took Eva in for her 6 month shots today and had her weighed. She has always been a big baby and every time we weigh her it's a new shock as to how much the scale says. This time....18.75 lbs! She is now in the 90-95th percentile....meaning HUGE. I checked to make sure I wasn't over feeding her, and nope. I am in the clear. I just have a naturally huge baby.

Here she is hangin' with her daddy.
I don't care what anyone says....I love her baby fat :)

...Scratch that....Her sleeping has changed. She usually sleeps through the night, from about midnight to 9 or 1oam. Not since she got you-know-what...this is the third time in a week that she's been up at 3 or 4am.

...I'm tired. And again...I'll just go ahead and blame the shots.

My baby is being weird lately. It seems whenever we go and get Eva's immunization shots, a day or two later she starts doing something weird she's never done before. It could definitely be all in my head, I realize this. Steve and I are uncertain what we think about immunization, but it's difficult to sort through both sides of the biased-information argument....so until we can form a clear opinion not to, for now we are getting her shots.

You hear all these horror stories of mom's saying their child became autistic after they got their shots...so maybe I'm looking and analyzing for things to be wrong. But when she was two months old and she got her shots, she definitely acted weird for weeks. She was on this perfect sleep/eat schedule and all of the sudden she didn't want to have good naps anymore, and she was eating at weird times. It just threw her off and it took me weeks to get her back on track. This time, her eating/sleeping has been fine, but she's developed this incessant whine. Ugh. Little Miss Whiney-Pants. She's only been doing it a couple of days, but I'm sick of it already. If I lay her on the floor - whine. If I walk out of the room - whine. If I don't keep her entertained - whine. This is totally normal for a 4 month old baby, it's just that she didn't do it before...it's a recent development since the shots.

Oh how I hate those dreadful shots. They probably didn't cause my baby to be whiney.....but for now, I'm blaming them.