Smiles and Shots

So we went to the doctor on Friday and our "little" man already weighs 13 pounds.  Which means he is in the 91% percentile for his weight.  Yup.  That means he really is the size of a 3 month old.  We might need a bigger house to keep him in....

Other than that he's healthy and happy.  Most of the time.  He gets gassy a lot, so we do a lot of bouncing and gas drops.  But, he sleeps well (7 hours last night) so I can't complain.

At the doctor, he was supposed to get 7 vaccinations.  Oh, and he'd already missed one at the hospital.  I hadn't thought a whole lot about vaccinations before he came and I wish I would have.  By the time a kid is 18 months old they've had 32 immunizations...seems outlandish to me.

I'm not opposed altogether on getting shots.  I work in a public school - shots keep me from getting every germ that my students leave on their desks. (We've had 4 outbreaks of TB since I've been there...and my test says I've gotten off easy and not contracted it.)  But my 6 week old isn't being exposed to Hepatitis B - and won't be for years if I can help it - so why does he need two shots warding it off before he's 2 months old?  We did the DTaP and Rotovirus immunizations because I know whooping cough (Pertussis) is going around because of parents putting off these shots, and several friends/nurses/online sources said Rotovirus was nasty in little ones.  I'm thinking we'll make up the Polio, HiB and one other one next month.  So really, I'm just dragging out the time between his shots.  Why?  I don't know.  My husband thinks it's not really worth it to torture the little one twice as much.  I don't want him to have so much medicine running around in his system.

So I'm taking a "class."  This really cool store near us sponsors informative workshops - and is doing one on immunizations next week.  Hopefully I'll get some answers.  I just wish I could figure out who knows what their talking about - everyone has a different opinion!