I guess people just have to feel happy that they’re, they’ve got the information they need. I would say I’d worry about people not trusting healthcare professionals. I would say you know, I feel quite strongly that people can trust their GPs or health visitors, practice nurses, and use those as, use them as a source of information. I don’t think finding information on the Internet necessarily, about healthcare necessarily is that, is very helpful, and it’s really not necessarily regulated, or you can’t count on it being truthful. I think there is a, perhaps a tendency for people not to trust healthcare professionals as much as they used to, which in some ways, you know, that’s people have got to, have got to be quite questioning. But I do feel on issues such as this, GPs, practice nurses and health visitors they’re really not going to wish any harm on people or, or children. And I think for if one moment they thought that there was great danger that they would say so. I don’t think they’re, sort of just doing it because they’ve been told to. So, so I’d say ask them and trust them.

Having worked in healthcare for some time, I just, it’s just noting most GPs’ or nurses’ natures to, that’s not why people go into the profession really. It’s, I don’t think that’s necessarily true. And I think, you know, people like for example health visitors don’t, certainly don’t get paid. And I think they’d be one of the first people to notice if there was a link and, and say so I think if they would feel it was their responsibility to do so. And so I think they, in my opinion they can certainly be trusted.

So, the other concern is, is at the moment I’ve found a lot of parents are quite wary about giving the six-one or the five-one and then the meningitis C with it. And I felt often it just takes quite a lot of reassurance. Some of them don’t necessarily seem to be aware that we actually are giving the same vaccines that they were before. It’s just in a different form. And it’s ‘oh isn’t that a lot to be giving at the same time?’ It’s like well we have been doing that for years and just explaining that. Often it just needs a few minutes of time and, and just addressing their concerns and making sure they’ve got the correct information which often they don’t. And sometimes that’s all it needs, not always but often if they do have a chat with myself or the health visitor or with the immunisations nurse you know often it will correct their misconceptions and there are quite a lot out there unfortunately. I’ve found that. There are a lot of people who just, particularly from the media, have, have just picked up what they want to hear and ignored the rest and that’s then [pause] made them choose what may not necessarily be the right thing.

And then our little boy was born and I had the same reservations but again went straight back to this lady at Great Ormond Street. She reiterated everything shed said before and also I was interested in finding out if there was any more data, has anything happened because theres 3 ‘ years difference between the two. And she was just able to tell me exactly what the, the current sort of comment was on it and stuff and, and also it wasn’t just her giving me the facts, she was also talking to me as a mother as well. Shes got children of her own and she was talking to me from that perspective. So I kind of felt, unlike with our local doctor who I, you know, other people were commenting, ‘Oh they will just give you the party line,’ I felt as if she was telling me exactly what all the facts were as well as the fact she was a mother and she was also being honest with me about how she felt about it.

But I think I really needed to hear the way that this lady spoke, it was very much a case of, you know, her comments seemed to be along the lines of that, you could give one child a ham sandwich and they’ll be perfectly fine, you can another child a ham sandwich and they might have reaction to that. So theres always going to be this possibility that a small percentage of children might have a reaction, but like they might do to anything you might cook for them or something. But, that over-ridingly it’s safe.

And she was, you know, very sort of from a sort of top overview telling me about the information that’s coming from the States and various other countries and how many countries are actually using the MMR and how many years they’ve been using the MMR and that, you know, there is not a link, that, you know, and I think I needed to hear someone in her position saying, ‘There is not a link between the MMR and autism. And, so I think that’s, like I say, and I think it was having that initial conversation where she said that, that really kind of tipped me over to think, ‘Yeah, OK, I think were going to go with doing this.

Well, I talked to my own doctor, at length, and the health visitor. They of course were both, you know, sort of people you look up to and health professionals. And they couldn’t stress enough how I wasn’t to worry and how I should give [my daughter] the MMR because the downside was a lot worse. And if she didn’t have the MMR, you know, the things that could happen to her, how dangerous measles can be, and like the German measles could affect her when shes older and goes to have children of her own, you know, the rubella side of it. And these health professionals, I’m trying not to say the names, they were sort of, they’ve got no reason to say otherwise. If they for one minute thought that there would be a problem with MMR it’s more than their careers are worth to push me to give it to my little girl.

And in the end that’s where I thought, ‘Well because my doctor who is a family friend and, as well, I just knew he wouldn’t, he would not have staked his career on it. And, you know, I mean he just said, ‘Come on, give her here, I’m going to do it now. And he did it. And it was, and it was talking to them really and realising that they wouldn’t say those things if they didn’t truly believe them, you know.

He was someone, I, with [my son] being premature I saw a consultant, when he first came out of hospital, every two months, then every four months, then every six months. So a doctor that had worked with [my son] in hospital, so someone that knew me and knew [my son]. And I knew he had kids. And he didn’t think twice in saying, ‘Get it done.

Did you ask him if hed done that with his own children?

Yes, yes.

Did that make a difference?

It made a difference to me. I just talked to not lots of doctors, but I just thought, ‘Hes a really smart guy’ you know. I mean hes a consultant for premature babies, hes so smart. I just don’t believe in my heart that doctors would give you that information if for one minute they thought it would cause a problem. And I do believe that. I mean hes a very smart guy. And I think if he believed that maybe there are problems he would just say, ‘It’s your choice. I can’t say. But he did actually really promote it and said, ‘It’s really important that he gets it. I mean it was still ultimately my choice, but I felt like he, you know, hes a smart guy, he works in the field, he works with babies all the time and I’m sure he sees the problems of not immunising children.

What were the doctor, your doctor at the time or the health visitors, what were they saying?

I found them quite matter of fact. It was almost as though it was a topic that wasn’t necessarily up for discussion. They were far more ready to outline the positives of having the vaccination than not having. To me, the health visitor’s issue was either immunisation or not, not how to immunise. That didn’t seem to come into the equation.

And for you it was the how to was the important thing?

It was, yes, absolutely. But then that made me think, well perhaps, you know, there are, they’re taking this line because they are convinced that there is no real link with autism and therefore it’s not a consideration for them. So it’s just an awful lot to take on, take in, and an awful lot going on and it’s hard to know, you know, when you’re not medically minded, how to reach the decision.

I suppose so because, thinking about it, if I had been able to go to the GP that I’d had prior to leaving the UK, who had delivered me and so I had known all my life, I think if I’d have had a chat with him, it sounds silly to say whatever his opinion would have been I would have shared, but I would certainly have respected, yeah, most definitely. Because I would feel that hes, you know, hes the expert, hes better placed than I am to come to a decision.

We have a very supportive surgery. The nurse there was very happy to talk to us. I think there is, I suspect the GPs feel that there isn’t any case to answer and that MMR is safe and for many children it probably is. But they were open-minded, they were happy to talk to us, and we have had absolutely no pressure at all from them to vaccinate any further. They understood our concerns, they understood our reasoning for the decisions we took, and have, if not, I wouldn’t go so far to say that they’ve been supportive, but have been understanding.

But many times we had done far more research. And at the end of the day a GP is a general practitioner, they can’t be expected to be experts in every field. But what frustrates me is when you get to see somebody who is sometimes an expert in a particular field and they are still very reluctant to acknowledge bowel damage, that lactose intolerance truly exists and that both children had had it from birth, which we are led to believe is very unusual.

So there was a, you know, we felt quite rebutted a number of times. But in many ways it, it worked well for us because it gave us a natural scepticism about I guess the medical profession. And so that’s what drove us to then do our own research and do the amount of research we did. Whereas, you know, maybe if people had just said, ‘Oh, yes, you’re right’ or, ‘you need to do this’ we wouldn’t have actually been driven. But because we were being, I guess people just didn’t know that much or, you know, if they did, they didn’t have the depth of information that we actually felt we had to do ourselves. It was up to us to make that choice for our children, it was up to us to do that research. So that’s the path we led.