BLOOD AND A PINCUSHION

I will admit it, I am one of those mothers who is super concerned about vaccinations and all of the stuff that is in them. Yes, I still get vaccinated and so does Lauren but I was late with getting her first vaccinations. She was so itty bitty when she was first born that I couldn't imagine shoving all of that heaven knows what into such a tiny little being. So I waited until she became a little bigger. At 4 months, Lauren had her 2 month shots. I was just going to do everything 2 months later than it should have been. Well, then Lauren ended up in the hospital and she lost so much weight and they didn't want to stress her system. Lauren finally got her 4 month shots after her pacemaker surgery... when she was 10 months old. Oops.

Well, since then Lauren has been a human pincushion of sorts. She has had to go 3 times this winter to get RSV shots (one in each leg after the nurses count to 3 to synchronize the thigh pokes) and she went for the 6 month shots last week. Talking to the public health nurse, we found out that Lauren was able to get the 6 month and one year shots at the same time since none of them were duplicates. But that would have meant 5 shots. We settled on 3. After going through all of the possible side effects, things to watch for, when to rush them to the hospital, the nurse asked, "Has Lauren had a blood transfusion in the past 12 months?" It took me a second because your initial response to a question like that is, "No, of course not. She's a baby." However, Lauren has had many blood transfusions and her blood has been replaced many times over. For a moment it made me sad for her, but when I get like that I try to focus on the here and now. Lauren was sitting in my lap, happy as can be (the shots hadn't happened yet) and she was being a huge clown, making all of us laugh. Sure, she's had a blood transfusion (I should mention that to the JWs who are constantly in our neighbourhood lately), and those transfusions mean that she is a wiggly, crazy, beautiful 12 month old girl who delights me every day. 

Lauren still got 3 pokes, one in each arm and one in her leg. Instead of the ones that we had originally planned, we simply swapped out the two that can't have transfused blood in the body for the two she would have come back for. She can get those two missing ones some other time. She's got lots of it.