The Impossible Decision of Immunisation: Learning Life Lessons from Early Parenthood / Summer Hendry

I’ve been battling. To immunise or not. I am a first-time mother of a nearly six week old son and it is decision time.

I sit here feeding my son, looking at his perfect face and weighing everything up.

My husband’s mother, as a practicing medical professional, did research into vaccines and his parents made the decision to stop immunising their children when he was a baby, based on this research. My parents followed the advice of the medical professionals at the time and immunised. As a librarian, I’ve been doing research into vaccines. This research showed there is risks on both sides, but higher known risk without vaccination. My husband likes to make decisions by looking at all the information and then deciding on something. I like to get advice from professionals and then make a decision. We both trust what we hear from God over these things.

So we prayed, my husband said he felt to trust where God led me on this one. I asked God what was right and he said…

“Don’t judge.”

I’ve started to realise what a difficult battle this is in life, but particularly in parenthood. I’ve done research and curated the different ideas into my parenting approach, but when I share this with parents at any stage of parenting, it sounds like judgement coming out of my mouth… and maybe it is.

But I can’t judge.

I’ve been given responsibility, along with my husband, for our child. I believe God has given us free will, but as a parent I find myself in a position of making significant decisions for another human being, because there are many decisions he is unable to make himself. This is hard.

I’m used to making decision for myself and making decisions with other individuals, where we come to a mutual consensus, but not directly making choices on behalf of someone else, particularly a person who I don’t know well enough to make a judgement that I think they would make themselves.

Yet here I am with an impossible decision. Immunise and risk the rare but severe side effects, as well as the unknown risks of intervening in the human body. Or don’t immunise and risk many preventable and some severe bugs and illnesses, that my child is more likely to get. What should I do?

The one “should” I’m sure about is that I should not make a decision based on fear. This world is sick with many evils, and I cannot save my beautiful baby from many of its symptoms or from having this sickness himself, that is life, and it is beyond what I can do. There is also no use in fearing death. My God has conquered the grave.

So, what do I do?

I do my best. I am not, and will never be, a perfect parent. Not even for a day. Sometimes my best will be accidentally falling back asleep when my alarm goes off at feeding time because I couldn’t get up. My best may be feeding my baby with tears streaming down my face. My best may include skipping baths and unchanged nappies. My best is sometimes throwing out my approach because today I can’t do ideal.

My best is making an impossible decision that many someones will disagree with, and tomorrow may say, “I told you so.” But I am not a perfect mother. I also can’t see the future (neither can they, though they may try to tell me differently). I have to make decisions today, knowing they are not perfect.

It is tough being a parent. I don’t want to be a judge too. When I hear another parent talking about trying to decide whether to immunise or not, I don’t want to be the parent who says, “I did this… because it was right.” I want to say, “I found that a difficult decision too.”

Summer Hendry