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  • Advice Every Parent Needs When a Child Is Hospitalized

    We never expect our children to spend time in the hospital. So, when it happens, it can be a jarring experience both for the child and their family. But even if you feel like life is spinning out of control, there are things you can do to better navigate the situation. 

  • Giving Hope a Fighting Chance with the support of Runway to Hope: Evie’s story

    Just over three months before she would be blowing out three candles on her birthday cake, Evie Tanner was diagnosed with cancer. Medulloblastoma, a highly malignant brain tumor, starts in the base of the skull and tends to spread to other parts of the brain and the spinal cord.

  • Letting go and allowing our kids to be themselves

    My family and I recently went to a water park and had a great day. We swam in the wave pool, floated in the lazy river, and played on the water slides in the kid area. The weather was great and the crowds were low - it was a perfect family fun day.

  • How my roles as a woman, wife and mother have made me the doctor I am today

    This post was written by Dr. Brozyna, pediatrician at Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children

  • The vaccine schedule is safe and effective

    Pediatricians often hear from parents that they are worried about giving too many vaccines at one time and “overloading the immune system” of their infant. As a result, parents ask to “spread the vaccines out more.” As pediatricians, we know that the vaccine schedule outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and recommended by nearly all pediatricians is safe and effective. We don’t understand how some rogue physicians and some well-meaning, but ignorant public figures can contradict good science and suggest that the vaccine schedule that we use is unsafe.

    All scientific evidence says that the vaccine schedule

    is indeed safe and very effective.

    Many people draw the conclusion that it must be dangerous to give vaccines all at once. But in fact, that could not be further from the truth. There are very specific reasons that we use each vaccine the way that we do, both when they are started, and how and when they are repeated. What I will give you in this post and in subsequent posts is hopefully a clear, understandable explanation of the design of the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule.

    The Hepatitis B Vaccine

    The hepatitis B vaccine is the one immunization that we routinely give as soon as a baby is born. This is for two reasons. First, it works that early. Newborns’ immune systems are already up and running and are able to respond to the hepatitis B vaccine and make antibodies right away. This is a very fortunate thing, as many of our vaccines don’t work in a newborn body. What we know about hepatitis B is that almost all cases in children are caused by spread from an infected mom during birth. Many moms who are carriers of hepatitis B are missed during pregnancy or in the hospital, either due to lack of prenatal care, lab error, or lack of communication. The amazing thing is that the one dose of hepatitis B vaccine, if given right after birth, is essentially perfect in preventing infection of the newborn. The birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine saves lives every day. The other nice thing about that vaccine is that there are essentially no relevant side effects, not even fever or discomfort.

    The Two-Month Wellness Visit

    We start our next routine vaccines at the two-month wellness visit. When we immunize we want to be sure that enough of mom’s antibodies are out of the newborn’s system and that the newborn’s immune system has matured enough to respond to our vaccines. We know that in the first month or more, some of the vaccines don’t work well yet. However, by six to eight weeks they work very well; this is why the DTaP, Polio, HIB, rotavirus, and pneumococcal vaccine series start when they do.

    This is NOT because the immunizations would

    “overwhelm” the immune system if given earlier.

    They just would not be effective.

    Of note, the most common and relevant side effects of the vaccines given to infants are a little bit of diarrhea or throw-up from the rotavirus vaccine, and maybe a little fever, fussiness, or local reaction in the thigh muscle for the others.

    The MMR Vaccine Controversy

    The MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine is one that has received a lot of attention since it was wrongly accused of causing autism.

    In fact, vaccines have clearly and repeatedly been shown

    not to cause autism or other developmental disabilities.

    And yet, many parents still believe that we wait to give the MMR until a year of age because it might be harmful if given earlier. They then wonder if waiting even longer might be even better. The problem is that the younger you are when you get the measles, the sicker you get and the more likely you are to die. Our goal with the MMR is to protect small children as young as we possibly can, and to reduce the spread of disease in our communities.

  • Cutting and self-injury: what to do if someone you know is hurting themselves

    “Is it weird that I cut myself on purpose?”

  • When your sibling is sick: dealing with illness in the family

    Being sick isn’t easy, but neither is being the sibling of someone who’s sick.

  • Are you concerned about bedwetting?

    It makes me sad as a pediatrician to see families who stress over children who wet the bed. This is usually a normal, natural issue that goes away in time, yet it can really hurt children who are treated like it is their fault.

  • What are the most important things we can give our children?

    We have but a few, short years to shape and refine them, to help our children become the people they were meant to be. And then, we send them out into the world to find their way. It’s a tough job, isn’t it? To love and care so deeply about someone, about the outcome of this process of growing up, and yet be forced to let go of how it all turns out?

  • How to talk to your children about Ebola

    Ebola is a scary topic; there’s no doubt about that. With the onslaught of media coverage that has no end in sight, it’s likely that older children have already heard of the Ebola outbreak or will hear about it in the near future. The question is, what can we do to help our kids work through the confusing and frightening messages they see on television?