being vaxxed and making anti-bodies

[l_m]

AFAIK I'm fully vaxxed. Born in '79 so whatever was the fashion in poisoning babies at the time, I guess :(

My Q is - Will I still make anti bodies for those diseases I'm vaxxed against. I know that vaxxed folk can still carry some diseases, so could I potentially pass something on? Or will bfing offer some protection for my baby?

[Spy]

Just a few definitions to start with, so we avoid confusion... :D

- Antibodies and immunity (or protection) are not the same thing. In some cases, quite far from each other. Your body can produce antibodies on contact, if this is necessary, and vaccines can force you to produce antibodies with no real contact (just in response to a vaccine), but neither will necessarily 'protect' you from the disease, there is much more involved in immunity.
- Disease - is not what you carry, it is what you develop when carrying a bug goes wrong. As in, you can (and do, most of the time) carry a bug (or usually more than one at a time) but not develop anything or even know about it.

Now to breastfeeding. The way it provides protection (and it does!) is not so much related to antibodies to any specific bugs, and even less to antibodies you may have developed in response to vaccines (which don't live long for obvious reasons and if you were vaccinated in childhood, they are probably long gone). This is only a part of what can be in your breastmilk. That said, we have to remember that only because you were vaccinated once for something does't mean you couldn't get in contact and develop real immunity to the same thing later, and if it happened recently enough, you may indeed have passed some antibodies both via placenta and breastmilk, but we usually never know these things. Either way, maternal antibodies are never meant to last a lifetime for the baby, they leave their system fairly soon and the baby then developes their own immunity as things happen...
When we talk about protective effects of breastfeeding, we usually refer to immune factors (non-specific to any disease but protective for pretty much all of them to some level), that are always present in your milk, regardless of your disease/vaccination history, that create a real, solid, natural base for infants immunity that starts in the gut. Which is what formula fed babies are missing out on entirely, suffering from the consequences (which then are pronounced 'normal' and attributed to lack of 'antibodies' by the vaccine marketing... :rolleyes:)

So, to sum up - your childhood vaccinations are not likely to protect your baby (or you, for that fact). Your breastmilk will.

[l_m]

Thank you for that. Actually, I was worried that because I'm vaccinated I would not be able to provide adequate protection for my baby. I was worried that I could carry a virus/bacteria and my body would not be able to provide it's own antibodies to fight it.

I've seen a thread on immunity. I'll find that now I have more time. Thanks :)

[Spy]

Well, basically if you're carrying, you either develop immunity or you get sick (simplifying things a little here, but you get the idea). The number of viruses/bacteria we carry throughout a lifetime is counted by hundreds, if not thousands. Only a dozen, if that, are currently covered by vaccines and probably less for our generation. And this dozen are neither the most dangerous nor the most common ones, they are just the ones for which a vaccine could be more or less successfully developed and sold to governments. So I wouldn't worry about a thing just because I was vaccinated in childhood (and I was!!)

In fact, having had pertussis about 3 years before getting pregnant with my second child I am fairly sure I came up with more protection for him than any number of his (or mine, hehe) vaccines could ever ever have. :giggle: