alexist

A Labour MP has proposed making vaccination compulsory for school (a la the US, Australia, etc). Of course, the parenting boards are full of Rage.

What gets me is that a lot of the failure to vaccinate isn't because of some principled stance on vaccination. it's either laziness (if you don't show up at the clinic, you just get a letter. One letter. I should know, because I missed one of Aliza's jabs and she got it late. They explicitly say that there won't be any further communication) or half-assed fears stirred up by the damn Wakefield/Daily Mail campaign. Except then when measles breaks out at school, the parents freak out. That doesn't fly with me. If you don't want to get the jabs, go ahead, but be prepared for your child to get sick. You can't have it both ways, especially with measles. There were 970 cases of measles in the UK last year; 424 were in London.

Compulsory vaccination doesn't bother me particularly because it's the law in the US. You can get an exemption, with varying degrees of difficulty (every state allows it for medical reasons or for being a member of an anti-vaccination religious group but it's fair game from there). I'm not sure it's the answer though.

I'm not a shill for the NHS/CDC/AAP, but I've read enough anti-vaccination bullshit in my time to be deeply skeptical. There's too much half-assed "research" and distrust of science out there.

We didn't go anywhere today. I decided to sleep instead (not that late, but late enough).

I'm feeling a bit inadequate at the moment--I feel like I should be doing more with Aliza, even though she seems quite happy to roam around the flat getting into things! I know she's not at the stage where she plays with other people yet; if I sit down to play with her she's only interested in what I'm doing about half the time. (that is, play with her and her toys; games like making faces, etc get a reaction much more often). Plus, every day it gets to be 5pm and I feel like I haven't done anything.

I'll be ringing the dentist tomorrow so he can have a look at Aliza's tooth (just so I can feel better about it, basically).

Why the fuck did they bother having a "consultation" over post office closures? Not one Barnet branch was saved, and of the 169 branches in London that were set to close, only 7 are staying open. I'm really pissed off. Our local post office is busy and apparently profitable, and a thousand people must have signed the peittion. The Post Office had already made up its mind.

Now we have to go a mile away--either to the Regents Park Road one, which is tiny and has shorter hours, or to the main one in North Finchley which is always jammed. No direct bus route to either.

this morning, I got dressed and then went to change and dress Aliza. She managed to get her diaper off (it had snaps damnit!) as she was running down the hall. A dirty diaper. Ew. And she got it on me as well. Lesson: always get child dressed FIRST.

Unrelated: I have this icon on a forum, and 3 people told me that she's so cute it makes their uteruses twinge ;) *beams*