Woman reverses stance on vaccinations after rotavirus sickens her family
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Doubling up in pain, my 3-year-old twins, Áine and Lena, screamed out in unison as agonizing cramps raged through their tiny stomachs.
My older daughter, Natasha, then 5, was equally stricken — dehydrated and desperately sick.
All three of my kids had rotavirus, the potentially deadly form of diarrhea that could so easily have been prevented if I’d gotten them vaccinated.
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The guilt was overwhelming. But I thanked my lucky stars that they were neither newborn babies nor medically fragile, the type of children rotavirus can snatch from this world in a heartbeat.
At that moment, as my husband, Frank, now 40, and I battled the horrible illness ourselves, I began to doubt the anti-vaccine stance I shared with many of my highly educated friends. I’d been raised in a “crunchy” family that questioned authority and the status quo. So, when Natasha was born in February 2010, I entered motherhood with what I thought was a healthy skepticism regarding vaccination.
Purposely seeking out anti-vax books and Web sites that cited links between vaccines and rising rates of allergies, asthma and ADHD, I scared myself to death reading the (since debunked) report by Andrew Wakefield about the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) inoculation causing autism.
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And I found a local pediatrician who agreed not to vaccinate Natasha. Two years later, I stuck to my guns and refused all inoculations for my twins.