Dr. Caity (00:00):

There’s no evidence that there’s any sort of toxin in a vaccine. If you were to get that illness itself, you would basically be seeing the same types of proteins in your body, but you’d actually get sick, whereas we’re just giving you the ability, your immune system ability to fight it without giving you the sickness.

Dr. Sarah (00:27):

Vaccines have become a topic of significant attention and debate in recent years and are an especially vulnerable target for misinformation at the moment. But when it comes to our children’s health, from your baby’s first shots to yearly flu vaccines and everything in between, having accurate research driven information from a trusted licensed medical professional is essential for understanding how vaccines protect your children and our communities as a whole. So today I am joined by Dr. Caity Gilman, a pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, who cares for children from birth all the way through young adulthood. With her wealth of knowledge and experience, Dr. Gilman is here to combat misinformation so parents can feel more educated and knowledgeable in the health decisions they make on behalf of their children. From vaccine safety and efficacy to busting some common myths that have been disproved by science and answering the questions that Dr. Gilman hears most from parents in her practice. This episode is packed with really valuable insights. I learned so much and I know you will too.

(01:35):

Hi, I’m Dr. Sarah Bren, a clinical psychologist and mom of two. In this podcast, I’ve taken all of my clinical experience, current research on brain science and child psychology, and the insights I’ve gained on my own parenting journey and distilled everything down into easy to understand and actionable parenting insights. So you can tune out the noise and tune into your own authentic parenting voice with confidence and calm. This is Securely Attached.

(02:08):

Hello, we’ve got Dr. Caity Gilman here. Thank you so much for being here. How are you?

Dr. Caity (02:17):

Thank you for having me, Sarah. I’m great and how are you?

Dr. Sarah (02:21):

I’m doing good. So you are a pediatrician and you do work with kind of a wide range of populations, like a major hospital, so you see the whole gamut of things, right?

Dr. Caity (02:36):

That’s right. So I actually first take care of babies in the newborn nursery where they often do get their very first vaccine and then I see them all the way through the time they’re 21 and everything that comes in between.

Dr. Sarah (02:50):

Amazing. So can you talk a little bit about how the work of a pediatrician, what the role is, sort of in terms, obviously we’re going to talk a lot about vaccines today, but what do you see as the crucial role that the pediatrician plays in the family’s wellness?

Dr. Caity (03:09):

That’s a great question. So I definitely am passionate about taking care of the whole child. So it’s not just about today’s injury or tomorrow’s illness or just the development or just the growth, but everything together. So that means making sure a child is where they should be, again, both developmentally and nutritionally with their growth, but then also preventing certain illnesses and making sure that they’re on the path to being as healthy as they can be throughout their whole life, all the while still dealing with little illnesses that come up here and there. But a big role of pediatricians is prevention.

Dr. Sarah (03:46):

And so that kind of ties really nicely into our topic today, which is vaccines because the idea of vaccines is not to treat but to prevent.

Dr. Caity (03:56):

Absolutely. Right? Yes.

Dr. Sarah (03:58):

So can you tell us a little bit more about the role that vaccines play? How much of your work as a pediatrician is related to this sort of preventative care?

Dr. Caity (04:12):

A lot. So I mentioned a little bit about treating illnesses, but a lot of what I do, and I would say even more of what I do is well-child visits and at well-child visits. We talk about everything that I mentioned, growth, development, nutrition, how a child is doing in school, how they’re developing socially. And as part of these preventative visits, we do things that are recommended by the CDC and by the American Academy of Pediatrics that include screening tests like for lead exposure for anemia, and of course vaccines. And many of your baby visits, your early toddlerhood visits are going to have vaccines with them and some of course later on. But this is a crux of a lot of our initial visits with families.

Dr. Sarah (05:00):

And do you get, I feel like vaccines, I mean obviously they’ve been around for a very long time and they’re very, very mainstream ubiquitous. They come up constantly when you take your kid to the doctor for these well visits, but they’ve also, I feel like there’s some controversy over them. I feel like there’s a lot of misinformation about them, especially recently. They’ve just come under a lot more scrutiny. And I’m just curious, are you seeing an uptick in parents being more hesitant to get vaccines, being more concerned about vaccines, and how do you support that inquiry?

Dr. Caity (05:42):

Yeah, so to address the first part of your question or statement rather, the vaccines have been around for a very long time and most of the vaccines that we give have not changed in a very long time because of how safe that they are, how effective they are. That being said, vaccine research is always ongoing to make sure that there aren’t new things, new ways we can give vaccines, even new vaccines themselves that we can give to prevent certain illnesses in children. But yes, we definitely, we are in a time right now where there is a lot of questions about both the safety and efficacy of vaccines. And I’m asked this question by my patients, by the parents, by friends, by colleagues, and there’s a lot of different myths I would say out there. I think the most common ones is about autism specifically with the MMR vaccine.

(06:39):

So the MMR is the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, which we give at age one. And typically at age four, there was a very small scale study that came out a long time ago that said there was some link basically between the two. And ultimately it was found out that this was a fabricated study and the person who wrote the study actually retracted it. Unfortunately, that really stuck in the minds of people and has been very hard to dispel even though it’s been basically proven that there is no link. One of the challenges is that I mentioned the age of one is when we give the first MMR vaccine, this is around the time that children are starting to show signs of autism if they are going to be diagnosed with it. This is the time where certain developmental milestones are expected and perhaps not being reached.

(07:36):

And so there is an unfortunate temporal relationship between these two things. But the vast number of subsequent research that has looked at this topic has found zero link whatsoever between MMR and autism. Another one that I get a lot is about mercury in vaccines. And this is because there was a preservative that used to be used in what we call multi-dose vaccine. So that was when back a while ago, a doctor’s office would get a vial that had enough vaccines for maybe 10 or 20 kids in it. And in order to keep that safe, there was a preservative called Thimerosal that was related to mercury or had a version of mercury in it. This version of mercury in itself actually again, has not shown to cause any negative impacts in children, but not only that, our vaccines nowadays are, most of them are single use. So your pediatrician gets a box of individually syringed vaccines, gives them to your child and then completely gets rid of it. And these do not contain this Thimerosal.

Dr. Sarah (08:54):

Interesting. I did not know any of that. And that makes so much sense that especially going back to that autism link one, I think it’s really important to just impress upon people how one study can get embedded in the perception, but then it’s like a runaway train, even though they’ve done all the research that disproves that one study, it’s so hard to reel that back once it’s disseminated into the mainstream thinking and talking points.

Dr. Caity (09:30):

Yeah, exactly. It’s just something that it surpasses anybody’s other logic, unfortunately. But I would actually recommend your listeners and anybody who wants to read a little bit more about the studies that have gone against this, the American Academy of Pediatrics, which I mentioned is one of the governing bodies of pediatricians, we follow guidelines that are out through the American Academy of Pediatrics. They have a parent friendly website that I can share with you if you want to share with your listeners. And it has a lot of information about vaccines. And specifically for this question itself, links specific studies that people can learn about in a non-medical ease sense to learn about how they came to be dispelling this rumor.

Dr. Sarah (10:23):

Oh, that’s such a great resource. We’ll link that in the show description so people can find that easily. But the other thing that you were saying that made me, I was like, oh yeah, I didn’t think about that. And I work with a lot of kids who are getting diagnosed with autism because when they start to miss those developmental milestones, they often will go to a psychologist or a developmental therapist. And so this idea of correlation versus causation is an interesting thing. Just because two things might happen at the same time or be happening nearby each other doesn’t mean that one’s causing the other, which is very important. I’m glad you brought that up.

Dr. Caity (11:03):

Yes, yes, definitely. I think this is part of the big issue I think when it comes to this vaccine and autism is the timing for sure. I have to say, I’ve seen children who have shown signs of autism before they got the MMR vaccine and then have gotten the vaccine and the parent has been concerned. I’ve had children that have never gotten the MMR vaccine and have been diagnosed with autism. So I definitely agree with you that the causation is not what’s going on here, more of just the timing.

Dr. Sarah (11:43):

And so, okay. Can you tell us a little bit about, we talked about the research about its safety and its efficacy, but there’s a tremendous amount right now of, I would say misinformation being even beyond just that older study and how quickly that can get into the water, so to speak. But now we have social media and we have such rapid fire spreading of things that aren’t really based in facts. And so I’m just curious, do you notice more fear in parents just anecdotally coming into your practice, do you find yourself having to provide more education to your patients around vaccine safety than you did maybe a few years ago even or maybe before the pandemic?

Dr. Caity (12:33):

Absolutely. So social media is an extremely powerful thing for a lot of good, but also definitely like you said, with the spreading of either misinformation or not fully informed information, I think there’s a lot of people who might have ideas and are vocal about sharing those ideas, but when they’re not either confirmed or backed by a professional, it can certainly go in the wrong direction. So I would for sure encourage everyone to get their advice regarding vaccines from their doctor, from their pediatrician or from the CDC website as well. I can send you that specific link. They have a lot of information or the American Academy of Pediatrics. I think with COVID in particular, the idea that we were coming out with this new vaccine that people didn’t really understand and the way it was perceived was that we’re just kind of making this thing that nobody knows anything about.

(13:38):

Whereas the science behind the vaccine was around for a very, very long time. Very long time, yes, it was a new vaccine, but the basis for it was something that existed long before the need was there. So I think that caused a lot of questions in people regarding how vaccines are developed and how they’re tested. And of course that was an extremely unique scenario. But yeah, I do certainly get many people who have more questions I think, than before and are able to talk through it. And I think that’s really the best advice I have is try to go, if you do have questions, try to go into the pediatrician with an open mind and with the questions rather than a decision based on something that perhaps was on social media.

Dr. Sarah (14:28):

I feel like viewing our providers as our allies and our guides rather than having to feel like we have to walk in ready to fight for our position, I feel like most people are curious, most clinicians are curious about fears their patients have and are really opening to talking about ’em, and they very well might have some information that puts you at ease or resources that helps you make this decision from a really educated place. Absolutely. Do you feel like, I know that some pediatrician’s offices will allow parents to sort of modify the vaccine schedule for kids, and then some practices are like, that’s just hard and fast. No. What’s your stance on that and what is the, I don’t know if there’s research on what the risks are of doing that and why some places may or may not allow for that.

Dr. Caity (15:26):

Yeah, so I’ll say that I would rather a child get the vaccines at some point than not at all. But I do agree that sticking to the schedule that is studied and that is put out by the CDC is really the best way you can protect your child from diseases. So they’re very intentional. So every vaccine that’s given at a certain age has been studied for that age, not only for the sort of health of the child, but also the way in which the immune system is able to actually respond to that vaccine. So the downside I say, I would say one of the two downsides of not giving them according to schedule is perhaps not getting the vaccine at the optimal timing of the immune system, or even based on the timing of the prior dose. As you probably know, many vaccines, most vaccines actually require more than one dose to fully get the immune system prepared to potentially fight that disease if it were to come into contact with it. And again, the spacing between those doses is for a reason. Additionally, if a child receives one dose of whatever vaccine and then does not get the next dose at the right time interval, there is a risk of them coming into contact with that disease and potentially getting sick from it while they’ll have had one dose already. Like I said, many, many most vaccines require more than one dose to get the full immunity.

Dr. Sarah (16:56):

I see. And then I would imagine too, this happens, I feel like in communities where it’s more common not to vaccinate some religious communities that tend to abstain or would try to abstain that there’s more risk for the out. So the general population for a kid should come in contact with measles or something and then expose a more immune compromised part of our general population that we could see a resurgence in the spreading of diseases that are generally kind of well suppressed.

Dr. Caity (17:37):

Absolutely. So you have children who, let’s say are not yet at an age where they can get a measles vaccine, for example. And if you have an older child who’s never been vaccinated that comes into contact with and gets sick with measles, even if that older child does not get as sick as they potentially could, if they expose this younger child who has a more vulnerable immune system and is not yet at the age where they can get ther vaccine, they can get very sick. For sure. And then another part of your question and what we’re talking about is something called herd immunity, which people probably may have recognized that term from the timing of covid and when the covid vaccines came out that the idea behind making a disease much, much less common and potentially getting it out of the population is vaccinating as many people as possible so that the people who can’t or not get vaccinated or are not vaccinated have a very, very low likelihood of getting into contact with that disease. And so that’s a big principle behind vaccinations. And the less we give certain vaccinations, the more that herd or community immunity diminishes. And that’s unfortunately what brings back certain very dangerous diseases.

Dr. Sarah (19:03):

What are some of the diseases that are at most at risk of coming back if we were to reduce vaccination rates?

Dr. Caity (19:12):

Yeah, so you already mentioned measles. So we’ve been talking a lot about the MMR vaccine and some of the things we already mentioned as why people haven’t been giving it as much. So measles, we’ve already heard about a lot of different pockets of the country that have had outbreaks. The other is polio. So polio had been eradicated in the United States completely while you still hear about it internationally. There have been over, I don’t know the last five or so years, more discussions about little, again, pockets of polio being found, whether it’s in the wastewater or just in a sort of local area. That is something that unfortunately is more concerning to come back if not vaccinated for.

Dr. Sarah (20:04):

Yeah. I know we talked about herd immunity diminishing and obviously the risk of our kids getting sick. What are of, are there any other major risks that we could face if we stopped administering vaccines to our children?

Dr. Caity (20:21):

So there’s a lot of vaccines of course, as we know. And many of them are bacterial illnesses. Many of them are viral illnesses. And all of the vaccines that we have are aimed at preventing these particular illnesses that we know are quite, that have potential to be quite deadly. So exposure to any of these things without having the potential for immunity to, it could lead to really significant illness in a lot of children and potentially even death. So the reason why we have vaccines, a little bit of a tangent for what we do is because we know that these illnesses viruses or bacterial infections are of the greatest likelihood to cause severe illness, disease, or death. We don’t have a vaccine for the common cold, for example, or for many regular viruses. When you go to your pediatrician’s office and they say that your child has a regular virus and they just need time to recover, we don’t have vaccines for those, not only because they’re often changing those viruses, but we know that in the vast majority of children that they will be able to recover without any type of incident. We’ve already proven that the diseases that we do have vaccines for can be deadly in more children than not.

Dr. Sarah (21:43):

Got it. So really this is about kind of risk cost benefit analysis. We are not trying to vaccinate every single problem out of our population, but if illness kind of hits a certain threshold for risk factors, if it’s going to cause significant problems or death, then that is going to flag it enough to be moved into that category of we need to vaccinate against this. Is that what I’m getting?

Dr. Caity (22:16):

Yes. Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (22:17):

Okay. Because yeah, I just feel like that’s important because we also, we have the flu vaccine, which is I think also confusing for parents sometimes because it doesn’t fit the same. I could be wrong, but it fits a different schedule. You get it every year and it’s constantly changing because the flu virus is constantly changing. And so I think some parents get confused perhaps, or I guess I should ask you, do you find that parents get confused in terms of like, well, why do I have to get this with all these others or does it change which ones I should be getting in a wellness visit?

Dr. Caity (22:59):

Yeah, for sure. So as you mentioned, the flu vaccine, most people probably know is it changes every year. And like you said, that’s because the flu virus changes and people might be a little more familiar with this idea from covid that the virus mutates. Unfortunately viruses, bacteria are pretty smart and they can change their makeup basically to try to get away from the immunity that the immune system already has. And so what happens with the flu shot is that every year the scientists who study it, they are basically predicting which strain or which version of the specific flu virus is going to be out the most. It’s going to be around the most, and then they create a vaccine based on those particular strains of the flu. So you need a new flu vaccine every year, even if you got it last year, it’s different this year.

(23:56):

And I think one question I do get a lot about the flu shot is, well, my child’s had the flu and they’ve been totally fine, or is it really necessary? Isn’t the flu just kind of another cold virus? And while both of those things can be true, the reason we give the flu virus, and this also relates a vaccine rather, and this relates a little bit to the covid vaccine as well, is that even if it doesn’t entirely prevent you from getting the illness, we know that it can greatly reduce the symptoms. So the idea is preventing hospitalization or severe symptoms that can lead to more significant illness in children and people who have compromised immune systems. Another part of your question about giving the vaccine at a wellness visit or with other vaccines is it’s totally safe and very much recommended. I would much rather when a toddler comes into my office for a routine visit, give them their vaccines they need with the flu shot just to give them the greatest chance of preventing serious illness from any of those things.

Dr. Sarah (25:05):

How about, obviously you give multiple vaccines in one visit and that’s totally typical and safe, but I also imagine that’s another common fear or misconception about vaccines. It’s going to overwhelm my kid’s system, it’s too much or they’re going to get sick. Are those common myths?

Dr. Caity (25:26):

Yeah, we talked a little bit before about people wanting to potentially space vaccines out or sort of doing their own schedule. And a lot of experience that I’ve had is because of that particular question is that’s why they want the space is there’s concern about giving too many at once about overwhelming the immune system, making the child sick again. There’s been a lot of research over many years that has gone into all the vaccines, not only their ability to prevent, but their safety and how they interact with the other vaccines that are given at the same time, in fact, many of the vaccines that we give are actually themselves combination vaccines, which means that they don’t just have a polio vaccine in them, but they also have a tetanus vaccine. They might also have a hepatitis B vaccine altogether in one injection. And that’s done not only to spare your child a needle, but because we know that those are safe to be given together and safe to be given even with other vaccines as well.

Dr. Sarah (26:29):

So I mean it goes without saying there’s rigorous research that’s going into all of these vaccines as you’ve referenced so many times. But can you share with parents maybe a little bit of what does the medical field use to research vaccines?

Dr. Caity (26:48):

Yeah, so they go through a very long multi-phase testing. Again, this was something that probably people learned a little bit more about during the first covid wave in that some of the phases of testing were shorter than in typical vaccine studies, but they’re tested at certain intervals, they’re tested at certain ages, at certain patient health, usually not usually, but the vaccines, the medications even that are not vaccines that we treat illnesses with, that we prevent illnesses with are tested in healthy people. And this is to make sure that the immune system does what we want it to do. And then of course, before something is allowed to be given to the public, it’s also tested in people who might have more vulnerable immune systems. So while I can’t walk through all the details of every phase, just knowing that there are very, very long complicated sets of studies that go into every vaccine, both safety and efficacy.

Dr. Sarah (28:08):

And can you talk at all about, because I definitely, I’m just pulling up questions that I feel like I have seen people spout out when they’re refuting or challenging the need for vaccines, but what’s in a vaccine? Is it toxic? Is it a little bit of the virus, is it other stuff added in? What is going to go into your body if you’re going to get a vaccine?

Dr. Caity (28:34):

Great question. So most of the vaccines that we give are, they’re inactivated vaccines. So the best way to think of them is a dead part of a virus or of a bacteria. A piece of it is combined with there are certain things that are required to stabilize that vaccine. There are certain proteins or other elements that are in the vaccine that keeps that part of the virus or bacteria stable so the immune system can see it. And what happens is when the vaccine is given, immediately the immune system looks at that dead piece of virus or bacteria and starts recognizing it and starts developing the tools to later on be able to fight it if it were to see it again. So the idea with the vaccine is not that we give you that illness, but we give you the immunity to the illness that you would get if you had had the illness. Some vaccines in particular, the ones that you would hear more about the MMR vaccine, the varicella, the chickenpox vaccine, and then rotavirus vaccine that we give to babies are, they actually are what we call live attenuated. So they are not in the same way the dead killed part of the bacteria or virus, but they are an altered piece of the virus that your body can do the same thing with, that it can develop the immunity to.

Dr. Sarah (30:19):

Got it. So when people are afraid that they’re injecting toxins into their body or their child’s body, is there any truth to that?

Dr. Caity (30:29):

No, definitely not. So I mentioned before the question about the preservative, and while that particular preservative again was shown not to be even a safety problem, there’s no evidence that there’s any sort of toxin in a vaccine. If you were to get that illness itself, you would basically be seeing the same types of proteins in your body, but you’d actually get sick, whereas we’re just giving you the ability, your immune system ability to fight it without giving you the sickness.

Dr. Sarah (31:06):

So that kind of answers another common question I imagine people get, which is why not just get the illness and fight it off and let my immune system learn that way?

Dr. Caity (31:14):

Yeah, definitely, definitely. So some people might be able to have a mild illness with the chicken pox or with the measles, but others don’t, especially like we talked about, people who are maybe can’t get the vaccine yet or not the age to get the vaccine or have weaker or otherwise more compromised immune systems. And we don’t know, other than the people who we know maybe have an underlying medical illness other than those people we don’t know who’s going to have a severe reaction, who’s going to get a disease to the point requiring hospitalization and being gravely ill versus who’s going to get a mild illness. We wish that everyone could just get a mild illness, but we know because of the epidemics and outbreaks that ultimately led to the development of these vaccines, that these diseases have many, many ways in which they can be deadly or extremely just devastating to health. And it’s just frankly not worth the risk to put on a child to just see if they can be okay without the vaccine.

Dr. Sarah (32:23):

I think that is so important for people to hear. And again, I am throwing out hypotheticals that I’ve definitely seen people type in response to certain social media posts or I’ve actually heard parents express and I’m bringing them up, not at all to imply that people who have these questions aren’t informed or poorly informed. There’s a lot of, it’s hard to always know what information we’re getting out there is valid and not. So having you I think be able to speak directly to these questions that really well-intentioned and really parents who really deeply care about the health of their children are genuinely asking, I think can be very, very important. So I dunno, I feel like saying if you ever had any of these questions or fears, that’s okay and that’s good that you’re questioning these things and also here’s some really important information to answer those questions.

Dr. Caity (33:27):

Absolutely. I am always happy to have a conversation and like you mentioned before, hear about what a parent’s fears are, what the questions are, where they come from. I can’t say I speak for everyone in the world, but I think as pediatricians, we understand that your child and that you obviously are doing everything you can to make sure they’re as healthy as possible, but that’s also our goal as pediatricians and we can work together to come to the point of doing everything that’s best for them.

Dr. Sarah (34:05):

Yeah, yeah. I’m so grateful for the work that you do. I’m wondering if there are other common questions you might get from parents about vaccines that I haven’t thought of?

Dr. Caity (34:19):

Yeah, I mean, we talked a little bit about this, but I think kind of want to say a few more things about it, about the flu shot in general. I often have parents ask if the child will get the flu or maybe from past experience that they got sick. My child gets sick every year that they get the flu shot afterwards, so I’m never going to give the flu shot again. And I think with the flu itself, there’s two things that I always tell families and why this can happen and why I still recommend the flu shot. So number one, the flu, the vaccine, just like every other vaccine, your body is immediately upon getting it actually doing a lot of work. Your immune system is busy at work trying to develop the tools, like I said, that are needed to potentially fight that flu if you’re exposed to it.

(35:12):

And sometimes because of that you can feel a little bit less than your perfect self, that’s okay. It doesn’t mean you have the flu, it doesn’t mean something’s wrong, it just means your body is actually doing what it’s supposed to do. The other side of it is that the people who are concerned that they’re actually getting the flu after getting the vaccine are getting sick every time. I find, and I often explain that we are in the flu season, we’re giving the flu vaccine in this season for a reason, right? Because there’s so many viruses, there’s so many illnesses that are around, and while the body can recover well from many of them, the flu as we know can cause more significant illness and need for hospitalization. But the children who are, they’re at school, they’re at daycare, they’re around other children constantly. They’re exploring the world and always exposed to some type of virus.

(36:11):

They’re probably exposed to a cold the day before you gave them the flu shot or a few days ago they were at school and someone was sick and maybe sneezed near them and they didn’t wash their hands well enough. And if they hadn’t gotten something to activate their immune system, maybe they wouldn’t have gotten any illness whatsoever. But because they got the flu shot and their body was kind of working hard to develop that flu immunity, the other illness didn’t get taken care of quite in the same way. So it’s not so much that they’re getting sick from the flu, but it’s that virus that they were exposed to two days before getting the flu shot, if that makes sense.

Dr. Sarah (36:51):

It might not have otherwise turned into anything but their immune system because of having the flu vaccine was kind of taxed.

Dr. Caity (36:59):

Exactly. Right, exactly.

Dr. Sarah (37:01):

Got it. That makes a lot of sense. I’ve always wondered this myself, but giving, I had someone who, when my son was born and I was a brand new mom and taking him to go to the doctor a lot, getting shots, someone was like, oh, you should really make sure you give them pain medication beforehand because it’s going to hurt them. And I’ve also have been, I’ve heard that maybe that’s not optimal because that can interfere. What’s the truth to that?

Dr. Caity (37:37):

Yeah, so we usually don’t recommend giving pain medication beforehand, just like you said, we kind of want the body to respond in the full way that it sort of should without any other medication on board, of course, other than what they might be taking for any other reason, it is more than okay and recommended to of course, give your child medication after the fact if they have a fever or if they have soreness or if they’re fussy. But it’s not necessary and often not recommended to give something before. And there’s also plenty of things that you can do, I would say as a parent to soothe your child while they’re getting the vaccine, you can work with your doctor’s office depending on whether it’s the doctor or the nurse, whoever is giving it at the office to try to hold the child in a certain way.

(38:31):

Moms can breastfeed or bottle feed at the time of a vaccine, and that can also help the immediate pain in that moment and then it can save the medication for later. I will say a little bit again of a tangent, but just side effects of vaccines I think is kind of relevant in this strain of conversation that many of the first time children getting vaccines, which I had mentioned before, that we do the first vaccine in the hospital often, and this is the hepatitis B, the first hepatitis B vaccine. This one does not cause the side effects that I’m about to mention, but typically around the two month visit is when babies are getting their first other sets of vaccines and while the immune system is working to develop this immunity, babies can get fever. The fever itself is not dangerous and it can be treated with medications and it even will go away by itself. So it’s just the body’s response to doing all that hard work to making it healthy for the long run.

Dr. Sarah (39:39):

That’s good to know. Are there other fears around a baby being too little or too fragile for a vaccine that might prevent parents from wanting to get a vaccine for their kid at birth or in these early visits?

Dr. Caity (39:55):

Absolutely. That’s something I think I’ve heard more and more that there’s concern about a baby being too young for certain vaccines or too small, or parents who are intention to give vaccines but are going to wait until the child is going to school or they are going to wait until someone tells them that they can’t go to daycare or whatever until they’re given. And this goes back to what we’re saying before that really all the vaccines are very much intentioned at certain time periods, both for the sake of the immune system, but also for the prevention of these diseases. Because we know the younger the baby is, the more they don’t have their own defenses, the more that they are susceptible to having these really serious illnesses from specific viruses or bacteria. So going back to the conversation about measles, like if a otherwise healthy 2-year-old gets the measles, maybe they’re okay, but they’re two month old sibling is much more likely to have very serious illness from it. So for sure, trying to always reassure parents that the babies are not too young, not too fragile, and that really this is the time that we want to give them all this protection that they need.

Dr. Sarah (41:22):

Yeah, that’s really important I think, to emphasize these are literally designed for this specific stage of their development. It’s intended to be given to them at this state.

Dr. Caity (41:36):

Right? And exactly, it’s intended and studied very, very well. So every time interval, every age we say your child is due for vaccines, it’s because this is the age that it has been found to be the most optimal to provide that protection.

Dr. Sarah (41:55):

That’s great. This was so informational. I feel like you really clarified hopefully a lot of fears that parents might be having, especially as there’s so much noise kind of swirling right now around vaccines, and I just hope parents really hear this and hear in this permission to talk to their doctors about their questions. Right? There’s no stupid question that your doctor is never going to roll their eyes at you. They’re never, hopefully never going to lecture you if they do go find a doctor who doesn’t, but who’s also going to give you the information and help you make really informed and educated decisions about the health of your child.

Dr. Caity (42:43):

Exactly. I completely agree. I mean, please, please ask your pediatrician every question you have. That’s why we’re there. We’re there to care for your child as a whole, and we know how many different bits and pieces go into that, and we just want to, I’ll give you all the information that we can to give you the best choices.

Dr. Sarah (43:05):

Well, thank you for the work that you do. I will put the links of the resource that you shared in the show notes and the show description and come back again soon to answer more of our parenting medical questions.

Dr. Caity (43:19):

Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Sarah (43:27):

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