20140702.0743

Ms. 8 got to go to the doctor yesterday. Since she is a bit more than four months old, she was a bit past due for a series of vaccinations, and it was good to get her checked up on in any event. For the record, she is on the lower end of normal size for her age--and that without correcting for the five weeks her birth was early. But it is not an issue of her being underfed (I promise; I feed her often and abundantly during the day, after all). I think that because the Mrs. made an effort to eat well and not too much while she was pregnant with Ms. 8, our daughter has started off with an advantage over many of her contemporaries. It is something worth prizing, as she will need all the help she can get in the years to come.

The vaccinations went more or less well. While I am aware that some conspiracy nuts will say that my wife and I are setting our daughter up for autism--which is not the case, as study after study has found, although I am aware that those same nuts will claim that the studies cannot be trusted and that the "real" truth is being suppressed by Big Pharma--and other conspiracy nuts will say that we are setting her up to be a complacent, chemically-dependent subject of the corporate-hegemonic complex, I am confident that I have done what I ought to do with her. She does not appear to have had any adverse reactions to the process, other than objecting strenuously to having needles in her thighs (for which I cannot blame her).

I have seen what one of the diseases against which Ms. 8 has been inoculated can do. I remember seeing--with my own eyes and not on a screen--some of my older relatives who had contracted polio in the days before vaccination was available or widespread. I have heard the story of what happened to the family of one of them; the person's father sold as much of what they had as could be sold, trying to raise enough money to find a cure for what ended up being unable to be cured, and so was reduced to near-penury for no effect save the ongoing scorn of his own kin. I would spare my daughter that if I could. She will face enough challenges simply because she will be a woman in this world that too often does not value women except as dumping-grounds for sperm that must be controlled by men and in the men's interests. She will face enough hardship because she has not been born into a family that can afford to give her affluenza--which is not a disease so much as a superpower. She will face enough difficulty because she has me for a father, and I know that I am not an easy person to endure. I do not need to add a bevy of easily preventable diseases to what she must overcome.