Oh the pressures...

There's a whole freakin' lot of responsibility that comes with being a parent. I'm not even one yet, but I find at times that I feel a little overwhelmed by the decisions that you have to make very early in your child's life despite not having a chance to educate yourself first.

This is a bit related to my previous post about educating yourself to make the best decisions in your own situation. I was having a discussion with the co-worker who originally sent me to my new chiropractor. This is a woman who I respect very highly and whose opinion I hold in high regard. We began to discuss the latest research that connects infant vaccinations to autism, ADD, ADHD and additional behavioral disorders. It really got me thinking about how little we know about the long term effects that these "chemicals" are having on our children.

I'm only just beginning to do my own research on the subject and I plan on discussing this more in depth later as I become better informed, but I was shocked to learn that mercury is used as the main preservative in vaccinations (known as thiomersol) and that these behavioral disorders are often seen to be developing immediately following standard childhood inoculations. Not only that, but the symptoms of autism are nearly identical to those of mercury poisoning.

The problem is that the U.S. Government and the CDC refuse to release information that has been gathered in their experiments on this subject. Europe has been much more forthcoming with information and dozens of countries now explicitly ban these preservatives while they still sit on the shelf, waiting to be used in the U.S.

Anyhow, I will continue to update with information I gather. I can't guarantee that I won't automatically refuse vaccinations for our daughter, but at least we're going to be heavily weigh our options and decide what is best for her. As much as I would like to post some websites that I think you should visit, I'm going to hold off until I feel as though I've looked at this argument from both sides. Until then, I encourage any parents-to-be reading this to start their own research and arm themselves with information.