Skinship

Skinship groups

Dear readers,

I would like to invite you to join us at Mother's click. I've created two goups for parents who believe in attachment parenting, want to share their ideas, ask for advice or just have a chat with similarly minded parents.

First group is called Skinship and can be found here. It is open for all English speaking readers who share passion for connected and respectful parenting, breastfeeding, co-sleeping, babywearing, cloth diapers or elimination communication and much more.

Since many of Skinship readers come from Slovenia and feel more comfortable communicating in Slovenian I've created a Slovene group called "Moja Mami". You can join us at MojaMami web page.

To join any of the groups you have to register here. You can also upload your picture. The web platform used at Mother's click enables us to use several services from posting notes, activities, managing group calendar, posting photos, posting reviews, and much more.

I wish you a great fun using the service and hope to meet you online soon.

Anja

Vaccination- reading list

Vaccination- more resources

Here are more useful resources for those who want to be informed on vaccinations:

Vaccination Risk Awareness Network has a comprehensive web site covering all the main issues that parents face when deciding upon vaccination of our children. I really like the detailed list of the ingrediants in each vaccination given to children together with a direct link to the producer of that vaccination and their original description of indications, contraindications, warings, adverse reactions observed during the controlled clinical trials and much more.

I also like the Canadian Immunisation Guide which covers everything from the list and description of all vaccinations, description of adverse effects following the vaccinations, description of active immunizing agents and passive immunizations. At the end it provides a descriptive table comparing each disease with the effects of the immunization against it.

I hope those resources will help you make informed decision.

Vaccination: how to make informed decision?

There is no issue in parenting that would raise so much controversy as vaccination does. And there is no issue where it is so hard to find sources against the conventional way.

When I face decisions in life I usually collect information from both sides (pros and cons) and carefully study them.

In the case of vaccinations I soon discovered that it is quite easy to find the literature advocating vaccination but much more difficult to find scientific studies that argue against it. I was trying to think why is that?

First of all, such studies are quite expensive and someone who has interest in results has to sponsor them. From this point of view there are definitely more companies out there that want to prove that vaccinations are safe than those who want to prove against it.

Secondly, the vaccination side effects (especially long tem) can hardly be proven. It is hard to attribute any long term chronic disease (like allergies, diabetes or other diseases, disorders like autism and not to mention cancer) to the vaccination given during the childhood. There are so many variables (genetic predispositions, life style, social situation and many more) that can not be controlled for in scientific research. Additionally longitudinal studies that would follow children through their life are very expensive, time consuming and hard to conduct. Even in cases when children die shortly after vaccination there is almost impossible to prove the causal relationship.

This is why anti-vaccine debates usually come down to the vaccine ingredients (like mercury, animal proteins, etc.) and their direct side-effects. But there is always very little debate on long term effects of vaccination or even death.

And that it is why it is so hard to decide. I researched most of the available literature and I really tried to rely only on credible sources. There is so much manipulation out there theta you really have to be careful what you are reading.

One page that really covers many aspects of vaccination is The Think Twice Institute . What I liked the most is the list of scientific articles on the effects of vaccination. You will find it here.

And there is a great blog on vaccination by Barbara Loe Fisher. She is the co-founder and president of National Vaccine Information Center. You will find many interesting information on this site. She is also expert on vaccination at the Mothering Magazine. Her blog Vaccine awakening is a great resource and I am sure you will find something useful.

Later this week I will add the reading list on this topic. I will also list the pros and cons that we are going true before making informed decision about vaccinations.