After birth

Right after he was born, my son was given the Hepatitis B and Vitamin K shots like they do in all the hospitals. We were moved from the child birth room to a normal room in the hospital. For some reason, they did not do much of skin to skin contact between mother and child at that time.

We were waiting for a lactation consultant to help us with breastfeeding. Despite me thinking that it was a natural and easy thing for a mother to nurse her child, the opposite was true. Our son could only latch with the nipple shield, which at the time I thought was a failure on my part. This was one of the truths that all the books and articles online wont tell a pregnant mother. Breastfeeding is not natural for everybody, it is a struggle at the beginning.

24 hours after child birth, we were discharged from hospital and sent home. That evening as the baby cried out of hunger and I tried to nurse him, I felt like I did not have much milk to offer the baby. It felt crushing to me that I was failing my baby. I sent my husband to get some formula from the store and fed him. This is another new experience in life when all that knowledge did not help. This was because no one tells you that it will take more than 48 hours for a mother’s body to produce milk. I wish I had known this at the time. After many attempts of pumping and trying to have my son nurse, I was relieved to have a milk supply 3 days later. But by this time, the baby got accustomed to the formula than my milk. With a lot of struggle and learning along the way, I was able to nurse him upto 10 months though not exclusively like I wanted to.

That same night my husband and I noticed that our baby’s eyes were yellowy instead of white. We visited the pediatrician’s office and were told, it was infant jaundice. The pediatrician also told that it was common in a lot of babies. After these many years I have realized that it was actually due to the Hepatitis B vaccine. I didn’t know anything about the vaccines or their ingredients nor had I read any research papers about how the vaccines impact the babies. I thought that the doctors and hospitals know the best and gave approval. Any new parent would do that because no one will tell you to do your research about the vaccines. None of the parenting/pregnancy book will have this information. I didn’t even make the connection that Hepatitis B impacts liver and hence the jaundice.

My baby suffered from eczema from 1 month onwards. Pediatricians will treat eczema as a superficial skin issue and tell us how to treat it superficially. After reading many medical journals now, I realize it was due to the Aluminum in the vaccines.

The information I currently know about vaccines have made me realize that it is a religious violation for our family. We are a Hindu Brahmin family who do not eat chicken, meat etc. Only one person in our family eats eggs, which is our elder son who also has severe life threatening allergies to many things and needs a complete protein source. The following are the vaccine ingredients. I took this information from the CDC( http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/B/excipient-table-2.pdf ) website.

• Human Serum Albumin
• Fetal Bovine Serum
• WI-38 (Human diploid fibroblasts) taken from aborted fetal cell
• Monosodium glutamate
• Aluminum as aluminum hydroxide, aluminum phosphate and many other aluminum salts
• MRC -5 (Human diploid cells) taken from aborted fetal cells
• Calf serum
• formaldehyde
• Monkey kidney cells
• Canine kidney cells
• Chick embryo
• Porcine or Bovine Gelatin ( usually the source is a pig or a cow)
• Many more ingredients are listed in the CDC link above.

Please take time to read from the above link. We Indians and those who follow the Hindu religion are not aware of this. We all tend to assume that the vaccines are sterile liquids in a bottle. This is not true. Other than the ingredients the vaccines also contain a lot of contaminants. There are also some questions that you can ask your doctor to know how much they are aware of this.

1. Hepatitis B is a sexually transmitted disease. Why are newborns given Hepatitis B shots?
2. Mothers can be screened for Hepatitis B during pregnancy. So why are mothers not screened?
3. If the mother is screened and is clear of hepatitis B, then why do they need to give Hepatitis B shots to just born infant.
4. Ask your doctor about the blood brain barrier of your newborn
5. Ask why Aluminum which is a neurotoxin is in the vaccine which will be given to infants whose blood brain barrier is not completely formed.
6. If your newborn gets infant jaundice like mine did after the Hepatitis B vaccine, I want you to make the connection I didn’t make at the time. Hepatitis B as a disease affects the liver, my baby got the jaundice after the Hepatitis B vaccine. Even while writing this I am upset with my old self for not making the connection. But as new parents who are new to everything, it is hard to do so.

Please read the medical paper about Aluminum adjuvants http://omsj.org/reports/tomljenovic%202011.pdf

On the religious front for me, we Brahmins chant the Gayatri Mantra, Pray to gods like Lord Hanuman, Lord Krishna who is also called Gopala (Go- means cow, pala- one who takes care), worship cows when we celebrate Maatu(Cow) Pongal where we decorate cows and also treat cows as one in our family. When I found out about the vaccines it was shocking. I felt that I should be more alert about what happens around me. I woke up that day. I learned that day to not believe everything at face value.