Flu shot for a 10 1/2 month old breast fed baby?

[@llli*giuseppesmom]

Hi everyone. I would like to know others opinions (I know it's not medical advice) regarding getting your breast fed baby a flu shot. I don't want to, but my father lives with us and he travels every month and we have relatives coming from Italy and we plan on going to Italy in December. I think it's best to get one, but I honestly don't want him to get it incase of rare side effects.

[@llli*debbers]

Do you have a pediatrician or even other family doctor whom you trust to discuss? My Ped is a traditional and natural family medicine doctor so I'm able to have great conversations about these things.

[@llli*celestialbadger]

It seems that the flu shot is recommended for babies 6 months and older so you should be fine.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/e...cle/007444.htm

[@llli*bfwmomof3]

I have had my babies get the flu shot when they were infants, for what it's worth. I've always felt the flu is more dangerous to them than the risks of the vaccine.

[@llli*kessy24]

I have to chime in here and say that the couple years I had a flu shot, I was more sick in those years than I ever had been at any other time. Would your baby not get benefit from the antibodies that you have already provided with breastfeeding? My experience was that putting the albeit dormant viruses into my body in the hopes of guessing correctly which one's might be around that year - put my system at a greater risk for catching other things - like colds, coughs etc. maybe because my body was busy making antibodies for the strains of flu I'd been injected with....
just a thought. Good discussion to have though with your doctor. Definitely interested to see what others' think also. Following.

[@llli*mappermarm]

i just finished reading the Flu Vac chapter in the Vaccine Book by Dr. Sears. If you choose to give your LO the flu vac, he says to be sure to get the non-mercury one and you may have to do some calling around to make sure you are getting the right brand (i just checked his website and it's one of the FLUZONE shots. He also says not to mix it with other vacs (tho he's a one-vac-at-a-time kind of doc anyway).

When deciding to get the vac or not, I personally ask myself if it's worth the risk of my DS getting the flu, and if he does get sick, how easily treatable will it be... then again, as a PP noted, you can still get sick even with the flu shot b/c the shot doesn't cover all the strains, just the common ones. The flu is a nasty bug and i have not had it in over 10 years, even though i only have had 2 shots in the last 10 years. We are still deciding if we are going to give it to our DS or not.. he's in a daycare 5/week and i'm commuting on a train 3/week so there are lots of opportunities for us to catch a virus :-(

FWIT, I strongly recommend the Vaccine Book - very helpful imo.

[@llli*sassypants]

That fact that you are traveling in an airplane would be reason enough for me. Airplanes are hotbeds of disease.

I would say that if your LO didn't go to daycare and no one in your home was regularly exposed to large numbers of people that you may be able to forgo it, but the air travel is a huge risk for sickness.