Category Archives: parenting

Injecting medicine back into vaccination decisions

Posted on by — Leave a reply

Puttering around on the interwebs, I came across this nice little opinion piece on CNN regarding the influence celebrities have on health-related decisions and why that’s not necessarily in your best interests. I’ll admit, I read Jenny McCarthy’s books while I was pregnant. Her book about her pregnancy, “Belly Laughs”, was recommended to me by a friend, and I got into reading her humorous, highly-accessible writing. I was also impressed that someone who made a career out of playing a ditz or a bombshell actually had the ability to write well. As I got deeper into her oeuvre, I saw her pain as she went through the nightmare of seeing her son change before her eyes, eventually to be diagnosed with autism, and what she went through to try to bring him back to some semblance of “normalcy”. (My term, not hers, and the definition of “normal” is really very much up for grabs.)

As I read “Louder Than Words”, I could tell that she was describing what SHE went through and what SHE thought, and it never seriously crossed my mind that I shouldn’t vaccinate my then-newborn dd. I took it for what I saw as “what it was worth”: here’s a person with (I’m guessing) greater financial means at her disposal and (I’m also guessing) a more flexible work schedule than those of us who work 9ish-5ish jobs. So, even if something happened with my dd and I needed to deal with it in the manner that Jenny had outlined from her personal journey, it’s not like my journey would map 100% to hers.

My memory’s a little fuzzy, so I can’t recall the specifics of the conversations I had with dd’s pediatrician about the vaccine schedule. I know that I did ask at some point about the Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vax that Jenny McCarthy blamed for her son’s autism (on the basis of a scientific paper which has since been discredited). I also remember that the doctor told us that the vaccine was safe, and I trusted her.

Now, why would I trust the pediatrician in the face of the story Jenny McCarthy told? It’s simple: Jenny McCarthy’s story, in the world of statistics or market research, would be described as “an n of 1”. She’s one example. She could be an anomaly. If she were indicative of the norm, rather than the exception, one would think that parents would be coming out of the woodwork left, right and center saying that their child became autistic as a reaction to that 18mo MMR shot. But it just wasn’t happening. Plus, there’s also this really overwhelming thing on the pediatrician’s side: she’s actually been through medical school. She studied and stuff. She did a residency. She actually KNEW things from having learned on the job.

This isn’t to take anything away from Jenny McCarthy’s experience. I can’t imagine what a nightmare it was for her to find her son a boy transformed seemingly overnight from a happy boy to one who shrieked and had trouble eating and whose communication skills dwindled rapidly. I can’t imagine the strength it took to go through everything she did to try to restore her son to his former self. I do know that, as a parent, you keep going even when you’re at the point of exhaustion, so I can hazard a guess about how difficult that must have been for her.

I appreciate that she shared her story and I wish that more people would take it for what it is: an n of 1. I’ve seen too many news stories in the last few years about outbreaks of measles and other easily preventable diseases, clustered in areas where the parents were turning anti-vax. It just seems horrifying that the fear of non-fatal medical problems leads people to court the danger of potentially fatal diseases.

I realize that I’m no more a doctor than Jenny McCarthy, and I also realize that the decision to vax should be within the purview of a parent’s discretion. However, I like the idea behind the bill moving through the CA legislature right now that would require parents opting out of vaccinations for their children to have to consult with a doctor first. Now, before any anti-vax folks start to freak out, this bill DOES NOT say that you can’t choose to opt-out of vax. However, it does require documentation (a form) that shows a health care professional advised what the risks were of declining the vaccine.

I see this as a step forward and I hope that states beyond California adopt this type of legislation. We shouldn’t require people to act against their beliefs when it comes to vaccination – but for everybody’s sake, it seems like it makes sense to require that they don’t decline without getting a consult from a real healthcare professional. Until folks like Jenny McCarthy have earned their LPN, much less their MD or PhD, it seems safer to leave the practice of medicine to those who actually know it best.

Data collection and your baby

Posted on by — 1 Comment ↓

{aside: YES, I KNOW I said I’d post a recipe for the Carolina-style bbq chicken. I still will…I just haven’t gotten to it yet. Work, exercise, tired, parent, work, tired, parent, exercise…you get the drift}

*   *   *   *   *

So, dh decided to interrupt my Angry Birds Space/me time with a copy of the most recent Atlantic magazine. It seems that there was a piece written called “The Data-Driven Parent”, all about how parents are turning to technology to help them track their infants’ behavior, feedings, etc., in order to bring some order into the chaos. On many levels, I SO GET this.

Flashback to nearly 5-1/2 years ago when, recovering from my c-section for dd, I suddenly realize that A) breastfeeding is WAY harder than I thought it would be, B) I don’t appear to be getting the hang of it and neither is she, and C) I have a supply of breastmilk that’s directly inverse to the size of my breasts, which turned into porn-sized bazooms by day 3 post-delivery. With my child losing too much weight in the hospital from lack of nutrition, I tearfully turned to formula and, pretty much immediately upon arriving home, a Medela Pump-in-Style. I pumped, really I did, but I was producing half-ounces at a time. Meantime, my friends from the online birth group were producing gallons, it seemed. Self-esteem, meet the toilet.

Because dd’s weight was such an issue, I tracked everything about her eating and her diapering. We were actually told to do this for a few weeks, and then we continued long after the doctor told us it wasn’t necessary. Pages and pages of double-sided log sheets were completed until we had finally gotten to the point where I was willing to back away from the spreadsheets that I’d used not just to track the feedings but to draw charts with trendlines. {Yes, I’m THAT person. I’m willing to acknowledge it.}

With ds, my supply was better, but breastfeeding was still no better of an option. He and I never clicked, and while I was in the hospital, he actually gnawed me to the point where dh had to run out to a nearby compounding apothecary to get me super-special healing salve. I won’t get into all the gory details, but suffice to say that I wanted to hug and kiss the LC who managed to get me a Medela Freestyle breast pump from our insurer as a fully covered benefit the LAST DAY that they offered it, which coincided with the day I said, “Screw this, I’m jumping on the pump.” {Also side note: Ladies, health care reform is brilliant and some pumps are now going to be fully covered benefits. If you’ve ever pumped or plan to, VOTE OBAMA this November. #thatisall}

I leaned on the spreadsheets I had from dd’s infancy and just made a copy for ds, tracking his feedings and (Oh Dear Lord) comparing his intake to hers. He got significantly more milk than she did, although I did have to supplement with him anyway. But he had whole days where he got nothing but milk. It’s amazing. It’s victory. It’s probably completely incomprehensible that this was a BIG DEAL to me if you never had an issue with feedings yourself.

And this all does have a relationship to the Atlantic article – which talked about how parents are turning to technology to do pretty much what I did, only they’re going quite a bit farther. The parents interviewed for the article are turning to mobile and tablet apps to do their tracking (“Back in my day,” she wheezed, “We used EXCEL and we made those formulas BY HAND! GET OFF MY LAWN!“).

I have no issue with them doing this, but when they get to the point where folks like Belkin are going to enable – nay, encourage – parents who own their tech to share their results with each other so that you can compare and contrast your infant with some other random infant, that’s where I bristle. In my mind, checking the kiddos up the street for “what’s normal” isn’t always your best bet, since that’s a sample that’s often less than statistically significant. Really, if you want to know “what’s normal”, check with your pediatrician. They know this stuff. They went to school for this stuff. They can talk you down off the ledge about how some kids will be 99th percentile because – and I know this is a hard concept to grasp – when you have a scale, SOMEBODY is gonna be at the top of it and SOMEBODY ELSE will be at the bottom of it. That’s why it’s a range. Or a scale. Else they’d change the scale.

What worries me about this is that, instead of enabling parents to do the tracking that makes them feel more secure by having knowledge at their fingertips, it will actually encourage them to worry more, to get even more irrational by going all Dr. Google on their infants about what’s normal and what’s not normal for a 4-week-old baby.

Maybe I’m overreacting, but it seems to me that data collection and productivity apps are cool, and things that encourage panic and contextually-insensitive faux diagnoses are uncool.

Maybe I should just get back to Angry Birds Space; I was a LOT less cranky then.