This is what happens if you don't vaccinate your child.

As parents, taking our child to get vaccinated is not really something we look forward to.

Watching our baby’s bright smiling eyes turn to confusion and sadness as the needle goes in just about breaks our hearts in two.

But it’s a deal we all make right? A moment of sadness to protect them and those around them from a lifetime of preventable disease seems like a pretty good trade off to me. I’m such a sook, that when my children were smaller I would make my husband take them into the doctor’s surgery while I played good cop in the waiting room armed with cuddles, and when they got older, lollipops. It doesn’t get easier to witness but it was and it always will be the right thing to do.

Bern with her husband and son.

Sadly, some years ago I got to see what happens when someone denies their child access to immunisation. I lived in a community that is now known to have one of the lowest rates of vaccinated children in the country, and I had to watch a mother at my son’s kindy go through the heartbreak of losing her gorgeous baby daughter to whooping cough. This was through no fault of her own. Sadly her daughter had come into contact with an unvaccinated child carrying the virus and just like that, baby Ruby was gone.

Could this mother have protected her child better? Should she have kept her baby away from all others until she had the chance to be fully immunised? Unfortunately life isn’t that simple and the day-to-day demands of daily life often don’t allow this. Quite simply this wouldn’t have happened if the other parent hadn’t refused to vaccinate her own child.

We have highlighted the tragic consequences of not vaccinating children, like the story above, or that of five-week-old Baby Brielle, another baby infected with whooping cough. At the time her mother, Meghan, wrote:

“Brielle is too young to be immunised yet and children whose parents chose not to immunise them, put small babies like Brielle, as well as others with compromised immune systems, at risk. Had we not brought her to the hospital when we did, I don’t doubt that she could have easily died with one bad coughing fit.”

And for some reason I needed to see, with my own eyes, exactly what a baby looks like when they are struggling with whooping cough. So I watched this:

It is so intensely difficult to watch but maybe it should be compulsory viewing for those with any questions about immunising their own children.

Yes, we as parents may dread the needle, but it is, like so many things when we become a parent, our responsibility. Our responsibility not only to our own children, but to all children.

To immunise effectively though, vaccinations need to happen on time and in line with the recommended schedule. It can be all too easy to get sidetracked by our modern lives and become, “too busy to book on time” or to say that, “my child was sick so I delayed getting it done.” (To clarify, babies with minor coughs and colds, without fever should still be immunised on time).

Parents: You need this app.

The difference a delay of a couple of weeks can make has too sadly, proven to be devastating in some cases. NSW Health has developed a very handy FREE app to help you schedule reminders and track your child’s immunisation dates. You can download it HERE.

Because we have come such a long way and almost eradicated a lot of these deadly diseases, it can have a negative effect with these diseases being out of sight and out of mind. Let’s face it, we don’t see many people getting around displaying the side effects of polio anymore. So when there is an outbreak of say, measles, as happened recently in Sydney’s inner western suburbs, a lot of parents aren’t even sure what they are dealing with. We all need to keep in mind that the fight to eradicate all of these potentially fatal diseases is far from over and we need blanket immunisation across the community, for it to be truly effective.

So if we know nothing else, we know this: Not only is it responsible to immunise our children, both for their own sake and for others within the community, but we also need to vaccinate our children on time and follow the recommended schedule. Because I for one don’t ever want to hear about the loss of another baby Ruby when it can be prevented.

Please share this post with friends and family who believe in science and support vaccinations to keep our community safe.

"I've seen what happens when you don't vaccinate your child."