#4 had her MMR yesterday, being 13 months old. She also had her third PCV booster, having had the 3rd hib/menC booster last months. She was not impressed by the experience of being held by mum while the nurse stuck a needle in her arm. Even less so by being turned around and having it done in the other arm too! Talk about adding insult to injury.
All seems to be fine so far, no swellings or redness at the site of the jabs, no raised temperature or general irritability. Of course, that doesn’t mean a lot. The side effects of MMR usually occur a week or so later….
It’s now three weeks since the injection (this is another one of those posts that I started but didn’t finish), and poor #4 was most unhappy from about 10 days after until this weekend. That about covers the first two effects of this vaccination, which are a mild form of measles and a mild form of mumps. She got the runny nose, hacking cough and red eyes of measles, but no temperature to speak of and a faint rash that I wasn’t really even sure was a rash. Then a few days later she had slightly puffy looking neck/cheeks on both sides, and was really miserable for a few more days. No fun at all, really.
I will keep an eye out for the mild rubella like symptoms in another week or two. It can take longer, but they can get a rash that looks similar to what might be a meningitis rash and if she happened to have a virus with a high temperature at the same time it could get a bit worrying. I have seen the rash before, as my son got all these things when he had his first MMR too.
At least #4 didn’t get a hard lump on her arm from the DTP vaccination as #3 did. When I took #3 for her pre-school booster I had forgotten about that happening, and was very taken aback when her whole arm from her shoulder to her elbow went rock hard, bright red and hot to the touch. This lasted for a couple of weeks before it finally went away, and is evidently a reaction to the pertussis (whooping cough) part of the DTP jab. But it doesn’t say in the leaflet that this can happen, just “a small lump may appear at the site of the injection). When in fact the “local” reaction can be quite large.
Anyway, that is all I can say about jabs for now, and I hope this might be useful to someone, although it’s not laid out very scientifically! It took me hours of scouring the net to find out that these things were normal and ok and nothing to worry about. I do think that the leaflets might mention these things as they are not that rare.
