Immunisation

She went to sleep basically. And I don't know, in, in fact both of them did, they both went to sleep, they and I don't know whether that was because I had already given them the Calpol and they were very young babies or whether it was just that would happened anyway. But I think because they had also both cried a lot, tiny babies, that exhausts them too. So, so they both basically had a really good sleep and by the time they woke up they were absolutely fine.

No. Our first son didn't really at all. My second son, after each of the first, I don't know, 2 months, 3 months and 4 months, did develop temperatures and was irritable and not really a happy baby for a day or so afterwards. But my first son didn't have any, I didn't notice any problems with him at all.

Every vaccination he's had so far he, he's been a little bit ill afterwards. And with, with one, the second lot of immunisations he had he was, he was really very ill and he had a, a febrile fit, which I think was linked to the vaccination. I'm not sure. It could have just been that he had quite a bad cold and a fever as well. And that was very frightening in the night he woke up, well we woke up, he woke us up and he was shivering and shaking and we picked him up and he, he wasn't crying. That was the weird thing and his lips were going a bit blue and he was shaking and so we rushed him to the hospital. Oh and he was vomiting everywhere and that was not very pleasant for him or us. We took him to the hospital and they explained that it was a fit induced by high fever. He has not had one since and it, from friends of mine whose children have had similar things it wasn't a particularly bad one but it was still quite scary.

So she had the second jab and this was just before lunchtime, on the Friday, and she cried initially, and then she calmed down very quickly and she was absolutely fine. And to be honest, I forgot to give her the Calpol, because, she seemed fine and didn't occur to me until several hours later. And I thought, well there's no point giving it to her now, because she's obviously not had a problem with it. And then it was eleven hours after the injection, she I noticed that one eye had become very swollen. And we phoned the NHS Direct and in between then and the nurse phoning us back the other eye became rapidly very swollen in about the space of twenty minutes.  

This was very frightening because our first concern, of course, was the fact that her throat might close up and she might have difficulty breathing because we didn't know what had happened. We were advised to take her hospital, which we did. And the hospital that we took her actually phoned through to a paediatrician at another hospital, and advised to give her Piriton. So we gave her 5 mls of Piriton and then they said, 'Bring her back… give her another dose in the morning… and if the eyes haven't gone down, bring her back but if they have gone down and it will take two or three days then I would just see the GP on the Monday.'

So we had a very fraught night because of course, she was wanting to fall asleep because it was about one o'clock when we left the hospital. So I couldn't keep her up, but at the same time, the doctor told me to keep an eye on her throughout the night. So we had her in the room with us and I checked on her every hour. The next morning, her eye had gone down somewhat, that's when we spoke to NHS Direct again, and we were advised that if we were still very worried, which we were, to take her back to the hospital for a check-up. So we went to the other hospital which had the paediatric unit and they checked her over. And the eyes, by this time, the eyes were really starting to come down and they said that they should go down over the next couple of days, which they did.  

They said that they didn't know what could have caused it. They did ask me whether or not I'd eaten anything different. To be honest, she was, my baby was four months old at this stage, and I'd been having the same thing for lunch every day [laughs], for weeks. So I knew it wasn't anything that she could have eaten because I'd, my diet was, had been exactly the same, there'd been no change there at all. So the only thing different was the jab. So we went back to the GP, as the hospital suggested, and the GP suggested that for the third set of immunisations, we have them in a hospital setting.  

So there was no reaction and it was absolutely fine, after she had her immunisations, and I'm really pleased that I had them done.

He was born at 26 weeks, which obviously has its own troubles, and he was in hospital for ten weeks. While he was in hospital he had to have his first immunisations at 2 weeks old, which they carried on giving him even though he was still very premature. So he had his injections at 2 weeks. And he had a reaction to it. He stopped breathing, which is very normal for premature babies, as anyone with a premature baby will know. But it was a reaction that obviously when his next lot were coming we were a bit worried. So I think he had his next lot due just after we left, left hospital, when he was about 10, 11 weeks old. So they said we could take him, to come back to the hospital to have the immunisations and be monitored. So we did that, which was, was good and he was totally fine. So that, that was very reassuring. And then I think his next lot were done just at the doctor's, and again he, he was fine with that.