DISCLAIMER- I am not always that great with words, this is just an opinion blog and gives information from my perspective.
I was adopted with my three sisters when I was three years old, I was taken from my birth mother when I was 11 months old and put into a wonderful foster home for two years. I was breastfed for my first 11 months...pretty impressive in my opinion.
I am the seventh of eight children. I have four older brothers, two older sisters and one younger sister. Family is very important to me, I spent a lot of my middle school and high school years with my nieces and nephews. I was raised Roman Catholic and when I was quite young my second oldest brother entered into the priesthood. My faith has always been important to me, I grew up praying the Rosary as well as the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. My Dad always had us watching movies about the lives of the Saints, if we weren't watching 'Saint' movies. Whenever we went anywhere we would pray the Rosary and/or the Chaplet. My two favorite Saints are St. Clare and St. Francis of Assisi.
I have been raised conservative and Pro-Life. To me, EVERYTHING can be traced back to LIFE issues and the most important and basic human right is a human's right to LIFE. I grew up going to Right to Life rally's and LOVED that we were about the only car in town with Right to Life stickers. I still remember the magnet my parents had on our refrigerator that read "Adoption not Abortion". I LOVE babies and children, they bring so much joy into the world, I think I have a good grasp on both sides simply because of my background as an adopted child. No child is UNWANTED and no one can take the life of the most innocent in their hands and decide to kill that life.
I am now married, I met my husband while in training for a cruise ship job in Hawaii, we dated for 8ish months, Josh proposed at a lumber yard in a rental car just hours after asking for my hand. We got married 6 months later and pregnant about 2 weeks after that :) We quit shiplife and bought a house...ups and downs....three children later, we are settled in Oklahoma City. I stay at home with the babies and Josh manages a Braums which is a popular southern icecream/fresh market. He really enjoys his job and we really like the company. We hope he will continue to move forward with this company.
Josh and I's very first argument as a married couple was about vaccinations and homeschooling.
Not sure how this came up, but basically Josh gave me an ultimatum sorta...
Josh: When we have children they will be homeschooled and we will not vaccinate them.
Me: whoa...we will definitely vaccinate, and HELLO! You married a highschool graduate and I HATED school...I can't teach our children.
Josh: FINE, I'll stay at home with the kids and you can work
Me: yeah right.
Well 11 months and 1 scary adverse vaccine reaction later, I was questioning vaccines pretty heavily. After watching my dear little 2 month old go through an adverse reaction to her 2 month routine vaccinations, I picked up a book my MIL gave me and started to read it, my emotions were the following while reading this book in order: Laughter, disbelief, gradual feeling of betrayal, complete disgust, despair. First of all I read the well documented ingredients and was sickened to find out that Aborted Fetal tissue is used in culturing vaccines...side note: I am the pro-lifer that will not eat at certain restaurants or shop at various places if I have found that they support abortion in ANY way shape or form. Not only was there the above listed ingredients but I was shocked to read the rest of the ingredients and sort of grossed out that I had been fully vaccinated as a child and adult, not that I blame my parents AT all...I firmly believe that whether you choose to vaccinate or not to vaccinate you are doing what you think and believe is best for your child. Well I started researching vaccines daily, I looked at the CDC website, AMA website and finally scoured all the information I could find from the vaccine manufacturers themselves. My final decision was based on prayer and my intuition as a mother. So - thats the history behind deciding to not vaccinate...it took me about 15 months to really come to the final conclusion to not ever vaccinate...during which time, Clare would receive a vaccine here and there when I fell to the pressure of various pediatricians. So very sorry to my DD, I didnt mean to make you my learning guinea pig.
Thats enough for one post, that gives some background on how I came about not vaccinating...and where my stance on Life issues are.
