More travel!

The whole family was SO excited! Thailand then Singapore! Seeing Clare! Then Tim and Jen in Singapore! Elephants! Legoland! Singapore zoo! We found a someone to house-sit, got packed up and went to the airport for our 9:40pm flight. We started the check in process only to find that the kids couldn't travel on their passports because they only had five-and-a-half months validity. Apparently they would have just flown us all straight home once we got to immigration in Thailand. Now it's one thing to have a 9 hour flight, 4 hour layover in the early hours of the morning in the KL budget terminal then another couple of hours on a plane before reaching one's holiday destination, it's a completely different kettle of fish to be sent back after that kind of ordeal. We called the passport office, we pleaded with the airline, we looked at Asher's face as his big eyes flilled with unshed tears. We then caught a taxi home. The passport office was monumentally unhelpful, telling me that the quickest they could guarantee a passport was a week away (her: "we can have it done quickly at extra charge, which will take you two days from the interview but the soonest I can book you an interview is Friday, so you will have the passports on Tuesday" me: "WHAT?!?")

After we accepted that we were not going to get on the flight (and I stopped arguing tearfully with the passport office at 8pm) our luck changed. The kind lady at the airport post office stayed open to take passport photos, and we got the passport forms, the kind Air Aisia supervisor told us we could change the flight to the next night for free, our house-sitter is the director at Kiran's preschool and she and I sat up til midnight filling in forms and using black humour to take the sting out of the situation. We didn't really tell anyone (except to let Aunty Clare know at the other end) because we were so unsure of what was going to happen next, and to be perfectly honest I was mortally embarrassed that I hadn't seen that one coming and organised around it. The next morning a lovely, lovely woman at the passport office took pity on us and we had the kids passports within five or so hours. We picked up the passports with luggage in tow and caught the train to the airport. The kind supervisor booked us in (no queue) and gave us express passes so there was/will be less queueing at every airport. Even the hotel was very accommodating and changeged our booking without charge.

So after what felt like two and a half days in transit we arrived in Chiang Mai and we are having a fabulous time. More to come about our great visit to Baanchang Elephant Park later....

Yes, I did choose to vaccinate my kids actually...

I know I rarely blog at the moment, but this has been boiling away for weeks now. I've always been pro-vaccinating, but it's an issue that keeps rearing it's ugly head for me. A few weeks ago when I was putting Kiz on the waitlist for childcare and the woman told me I'd need to verify that he'd been vaccinated. That's fine, it's what they need to do to protect us all, but when I said that he was fully vaccinated she almost looked surprised. The next week I took him in for his 18 month 'well baby check' at the Early Childhood Health Centre and when the nurse looked at his records she said that she was very pleased to see him fully vaccinated. Again, there was some level of surprise there.

Here comes the ranty part: I'm guessing that parents who refuse to vaccinate have never watched their tiny baby struggling to breathe, drowning in their own thick secretions despite hourly suctioning, from a disease that is routinely vaccinated against. I'm willing to bet good money that those non-vaccinating parents have never watched their baby go blue and limp as he stops breathing, only being rubbed back to life by hospital staff. I'm pretty sure they haven't had to press the red emergency call button or scream to the nurses' desk for help.

I've been there, done that and I'm thankful every day that I got to bring my tiny baby home with me, and that he's growing up into a funny, determined, clever, loving toddler. Pertussis, or Whooping Cough, makes older kids and adults sick. It makes us cough and cough (another name for the illness is 'The Hundred Day Cough' and it's no exaggeration) but after that generally healthy adults get well. Unfortunately it's not quite so simple for babies and small children. Babies die of this illness.

Wakefield's harmful hoax on the link between autism and vaccines was disproven about 10 years ago, and one well designed study after another continues confirms that there is no link but parents are still refusing to vaccinate their kids.

I'm quietly confident that the majority of parents who don't vaccinate their kids don't know anyone who has died or been left crippled by polio either but yet they feel that the potential harm to their child from the vaccine is higher than the risk to their child of contracting one of the diseases we vaccinate against. These people (and I know one or two) are sensible. The people I know are well educated and responsible parents, they buy cars based on their safety ratings, they do a full reference check before they let anyone babysit their kids (I read somewhere that it's middle class, university educated, parents where vaccination rates are dropping, I'll try to find a reference) but they clearly don't have a basic grasp of statistics. I am having difficulty finding the numbers on side effects and adverse reactions, however vaccines are many times safer than the diseases they prevent.

And really, this is the key point. It really is safer to vaccinate your kids than not. We all love our kids and want the best for them. We don't think twice about popping them in the car and driving somewhere, many of us have or visit backyard pools/ponds, almost all of us drink hot beverages and do at least some cooking but statistically all of these are far more likely to injure or kill our kids than giving them their shots.

I'm not going to get into herd immunity here (check out this animation for a good explanation), but every parent who exercises their choice to not vaccinate makes it more dangerous for those who can't be immunised for some medical reason and for the people whose response to the vaccination does not give them total immunity. If we can learn anything from the lessons in places like Haiti, with it's cholera epidemic, we are really only one natural disaster, one sick person, away from an epidemic. So yes, I know that vaccines aren't perfect, but I want to give my kids the best possible chance to stay healthy throughout their lives, so I choose to vaccinate my kids.

Kiran, 5.5 weeks old

The kindness, and otherwise, of strangers

Because I *still* don't have my drivers license I catch public transport with the kids a lot and I've noticed that little kids seems to bring out the best and the worst in public transport users. This morning I went into the city with Kiz to pick up a few Christmas gifts for the kids and as I was sitting on the train I noticed that the woman beside me was silently weeping, with tears dripping down her face. I didn't want to embarrass her, but I didn't want to ignore her distress either. I fished around in my bag and found a half used travel pack of tissues and put them on the seat between us. As I got off the train I gently touched her arm and pointed to the tissues. We smiled at each other and I got off the train. It made me feel so good to provide the kind of help that I would have liked had I been in her situation (and I have sat weeping on trains, wishing for a tissue).

On our way home we caught the bus. Kiz and I were both tired and hot and so he wanted to yell while I wanted to play mindless games of solitaire on my phone. The yelling toddler wasn't pleasant, but I had tried talking quietly to him, feeding him snacks and even, at one point, putting my hand over his mouth. Kiz kept yelling and I started to get angry glares from a guy at the front of the bus (his shorts were offending my eyes but did I give him dirty looks? No! I'm too polite). An elderly couple were sitting opposite me by this time and when the bus stopped they got up and moved. As the old man went passed me we had this little exchange:
Him (crankily): My wife's not well, can't you keep him quiet!
Me (apologetically): I wish I could but...
Him (even more angry): You could if you really wanted to!
Me (calm but bemused): How?
The old man then stomps further up the bus to sit with his wife, I tear up, mortified, and try singing very quietly to Kiz while imaging all the cruel or kind things I could have said.

...which, I guess, balances out all the people who wave, smile or play peekaboo with the baby or engage Asher in polite conversation, the woman on Tuesday who told me I had very well behaved children and the hundreds of people of all nationalities, ages, backgrounds, genders, etc who have offered to help me on or off buses, or given me a hand with the stroller on the stairs at train stations.

To all the helpers, I send out my heartfelt thanks, to the grumps: may you never need to rely on the kindness of strangers