Recently I learned that the only thing
that will cause more people to give you advice than walking around
with a baby/child, is walking around with a puppy.
Not that I do not appreciate the help,
and sometimes the suggestions are actually quite useful; however,
sometimes I just want to walk my dog; and thanks, but no thank you, I
do not need you to teach him to sit/come/stay/down and even once
swim....
Getting all this advice reminded me how
easy it is to be influenced by other people, and how easy it is to
start believing in certain things, like not vaccinating your
children.
I admit, for one minute of my life I
considered changing my child's vaccination schedule (I was never not
going to vaccinate, I just considered waiting until she was bigger).
I remembered this because some nice person told me all about when to
neuter my puppy and to look up the information online.
Just like when my little one was small,
I was once again completely sleep deprived, and when that happens,
everything sounds slightly reasonable to me....
So I went home and looked up the
studies regarding when to neuter my puppy. The science is actually a
bit controversial. Yes there is some evidence that suggests you can
reduce the chances of certain cancers, diseases, and problems if you
neuter or spay later (if at all), however you increase the chances of
other types of cancers, diseases and problems if you wait.
So I asked my vet about this during the
pup's check up. I figured my vet spent years and probably lots of
money going to vet school to learn about this sort of thing, while I
spent maybe an hour on the internet... she would probably be a good
person to ask. What she told me was it doesn't hurt to wait, but if
my pup's behaviour changes, or other dogs are getting very aggressive
with him, maybe it is time.
I know this had very little to do with
the choice to vaccinate or not, but the situations were sort of
similar. Back then, I was very much sleep deprived when I heard from
somewhere about vaccines increasing the chances of autism. So I did
what I usually do and looked on the internet (by the way, my uncle is
a doctor and he repeatedly tells people to stop looking for medical
advice on the internet, Dr. Google may convince you that you have
ebola when you may just be suffering from seasonal allergies...).
Anyway, there they were on my screen,
articles after articles on how vaccines were bad. Then being the
suspicious person that I am I looked some more. For one thing I
learned the biggest advocate for this movement (at that time) was
Jenny McCarthy. Now... I am willing to take fashion and maybe beauty
advice from celebrities, but I definitely draw the line at medical
advice. So the more I looked - which really was probably me hitting
page 2 on my google search - the more I learned about the methodology
flaws, and other controversy over the paper where this whole
vaccine-autism thing began. But the most important thing that I
found was most international medical associations clearly state that
vaccines do not cause autism (I said most because I never bothered
looking them all up). So yes, my little one got vaccinated on
schedule.
People mean well, but you know what
they say about good intentions... I am sure the people who stop me
and offer me suggestions on how to train my dog is only trying to
help. And I have no doubt that people, including Jenny McCarthy who
tell you not to vaccinate your children do not actually want your
kids to get polio, diphtheria and other horrid diseases.
What I learned back when my little one
was a baby, and was reminded about now, is that, it is important to
listen to people, but a little scepticism is not a bad thing. And,
always check where your information comes from. Google is great at
finding information, but so far, not so great as to filtering truth
from fiction... that I still need my sleepy brain to do.
