Vaccination time:(

Cecelia's pediatrician's office finally got enough flu shots in. Usually the country starts seeing the seasonal flu sometime around late October or early November. However this year there have been very few cases of the actual seasonal flu. Instead we got hit with H1N1. Epidemiologists aren't quite sure why we haven't seen any seasonal flu yet, but they speculate it has something to do with H1N1. Whatever the reason is, I'm glad it hasn't hit us yet because I have been calling Cecelia's pediatrician's office every few weeks wondering when the vaccines were coming in. Finally, yesterday I was able to make an appointment. In addition to the seasonal flu vaccine Cecelia also needed to receive her H1N1 vaccine. Although we are quite sure she had it back in the fall. Since her doctor only tested her for influenza A and not specifically H1N1(it's far more expensive to do, and they were not offering it when the epidemic was at it's peak in the fall), I decided it would be best to get her vaccinated just in case. I did this because we are not out of the woods yet. Pandemics usually occur in a "W" formation...3 "waves or peaks". H1N1 hit the globe hard in May and June, then we had a brief period where infection rates slowed(July-August), then when the kiddos all went back to school we got hit with another "wave" of high infection rate, and now we are in a period of low activity again. If history proves to be correct, we will in fact get hit with another wave of high infection rates:( Hopefully it doesn't happen but it's always best to be prepared.

Anyways, we went to the Dr's office immediately after Cecelia got out of school today. We didn't need to see the doctor, just the nurse. Thankfully we got an amazingly patient nurse. Last summer when I took Cecelia to get her last round of shots before kindergarten began she freaked out in the office when they came at her with the needles. She was screaming and begging us to "please, wait, just wait!" Of course 2 seconds after she got the shots she was just fine. Because of that incident I really tried to prepare her for the Dr.'s office this time. Reminding her last night and this morning before school that we were going to be going to get the vaccines, explaining why she had to get them, and reassuring her that it might hurt for a minute but it would feel better right away. I was sure that we wouldn't have a repeat of last summer. She didn't seem to have any anxiety about the situation, until we got to the office. At which point she got VERY quiet.

Once in the office Cecelia employed every tactic she could think of to delay or completely get out of the shots all together, asking questions, changing her mind between the flu mist and the shot, blatantly refusing, blowing the mist out of her nose instead of breathing it in (which doesn't matter anyways, it's already up there!), crying, I mean she tried everything! She really had the nurse and I chuckling every time she came up with a new tactic. Unfortunately we have to go back in 30 days for the 2nd dose of H1N1...this should once again be interesting! Cecelia never fails to suprise me and make me smile:)