Follow my blog with Bloglovin 8 weeks vaccinations....the aftermath...

So on Monday Rafe had his very first set of vaccinations. These consisted of two injections in his right leg and one in his left (I was wrong in my earlier post) and he also had a liquid to drink aswell. I was incredibly nervous about him having the jabs, First of all I felt like a terrible person for putting him through something that was going to cause him pain. And secondly I was very worried that he would have some kind of reaction to the injections and be ill afterwards.
The immunisations in the right leg were for Diptheria, Tetanus, Acellar Pertussis (whooping cough) polio, Haemophilus influenza b and Pneumococcal. The Meningitis B was put into his left leg and the drink he had to take contained the vaccine against Rotavirus.
As I mentioned in our 8 week update post he was very brave whilst having the vaccinations, with only a brief tears, and immediately after them he had his very first dose of Calpol and we headed home.

We got home around 10:10am, Rafe had a small feed and immediately went to sleep for about two hours. When he woke up he was very drowsy but also very unhappy and would not go back to sleep. He just dozed on me but then would cry every time I tried to put him down. As a mum you can distinguish what is normal and what isn't for your baby, and he just wasn't himself at all and you could tell he didn't feel very well as he kept scruching his face up and doing little cries. I basically spent the rest of the day sat on the sofa with him, having lots of cuddles and eating lots of digestive biscuits (me not Rafe).
The information leaflet that the nurse gave us after the jabs stated that one in five children will develop a fever if they receive Paracetamol suspension immediately after the injections. It advised to give three doses of the medicine, one at the time of injection, a dose four to six hours after and another four to six hours after that. So I gave Rafe another dose at around half past two which he definitely didn't enjoy!
It also stated that if a child is to develop a fever it is likely to peak six hours prior to the vaccines but be mild (under 39 degrees) well this still made me panic and I had my underarm thermometer at the ready, taking Rafe's temperature every five minutes! This probably didn't make him feel much happier but being a first time mum combined with the fact my baby hadn't ever had any sort of illness before this I was pretty worried. Plus I had done the fatal act of googling all possible serious side effects of vaccinations and this definitely didn't make me feel any better.

At about 6:30pm I noticed he did have a temperature of around 37.9 degrees. Now the leaflet said that anything under 39 degrees is classed as a mild fever but after looking online I found conflicting information stating that in a 2 month old 38 degrees is high. So I was ready to call the out of hours doctor. Also administering Calpol to a 8 week old baby is not easy. The calpol comes with a syringe, a syringe that with the slightest amount of pressure applied to it will shoot almost the entire 2.5ml of medicine into your poor babys mouth!! Anyway this is what happened and so Rafe understandably spat the majority of it out, and then was immediately sick aswell. This concerned me because he was no longer interested in feeding at all, which is incredibly unusual for him and he also had diarrhea (apparently vomiting and diarrhea are a common side effect of the oral Rotavirus vaccine) and I did not want him to become dehydrated.
I knew I couldn't administer any more Paracetamol for at least four hours because I couldn't be sure how much had gone in so I stripped him down to his vest and kept taking his temperature. During this time he actually cheered up a bit and sat there smiling at me!
I avoided giving him his nightly bath that evening because I thought that might overheat him aswell.

The sickness and diarrhea continued through the evening. He had a big feed at about half 9 and then vomited what felt like the whole lot up...all over me. He didn't have any signs of dehydration though like sunken fontanelles and he was no longer drowsy he was very much awake, and yelling! We managed to get almost the entire dose of paracetamol into him at half 10 and he then had a feed which he kept down. I then sat up with him rocking him and singing to him (he's the only person that I know who actually seems to enjoy my singing!) until 12:30am when he finally went to sleep. He then slept through until 3am, fed and went back down, and woke up his usual self around 7am.
The day after the jabs he was still off of his food and eating much less and he still had a dodgy stomach. However Wednesday he seemed to have made a full recovery and spent the entire day feeding on and off to catch up!

I was considering postponing Rafes second set of vaccinations because of the side effects they seem to have. However I went to see a close friend yesterday who has also recently had a baby, and she was telling me her brothers child was recently admitted to hospital with a suspected urinary infection that turned out to be Meningitis B. Thankfully she is fine and making a full recovery. I know some people are massively against immunising their children and that is personal preference and I am not telling anybody what to do. I hate the side effects these jabs seem to have and seeing your child in pain and then ill and knowing you have caused it is horrible. But at the same time I couldn't personally live with myself if Rafe caught something as serious as Meningitis while knowing that I could have done something to prevent it.
I hope this post helps anyone who is about to get their child vaccinated know what to expect although all children are different and from what I read online some have barely any reactions at all.

Jx

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