Imagine All the People, Living Life in Peace...

KRecently, actually ever since I became a mom, the debate on vaccination has been a never ending story and argument. Truth be told, it's getting a little tiring. Why can't we just respect each others decision, get along, and live in peace?
I came from a family with medical backgrounds - my father is a retired cosmetic dermatologist, who used to be a General Practitioner. Before the birth of my child, I never even thought about the issues of vaccination. My "research" back then was simple enough, anything my father recommended, I followed. Hepatitis B vaccine upon birth? DTaP? Checked. HiB? Checked. Pneumococcal? Checked. 
It wasn't until my baby girl developed a five hour crying marathon (and extremely visible dark eye circles, and fever before that) within days of her second month vaccination that got me panicking. Never once had it crossed my mind that it could have been the vaccines, and even till this day, I can't say for sure they are indeed linked to vaccines, but my guts and intuition all say they are. We rushed to the hospital, only to be told that its normal, that sometimes babies having long crying sessions for no particular reasons, and that I'm just being too paranoid as a first time mom. Even my sister told me the same thing. So we went home, and baby girl fell asleep from exhaustion. 
Then a week later, we traveled to Malaysia for Chinese New Year. Upon reaching and settling into our home in KL, I prepared baby girl for her bath, it was then I noticed that she had developed some sort of eczema. My first thought was that the dryness was caused by her baby products. They were minor, but the fact remains that she had eczema. Again, friends and family told me its normal for children to have eczema and that it will go away by the time they reach 2 years of age.
It wasn't until later when I brought out baby girl's little red book and found the vaccination aftercare pamphlet that I noticed eczema was listed as one of the side effects. From there, i decided to look further into it on Google. And I found out, it wasn't just me whose baby is suffering from the same symptoms, and that these "side effects" weren't as rare as the doctor told me it would be. Sure, we can't believe EVERYTHING we read on the Internet. But i believe we can take them as a guide, because there's no way thousands or more of parents (and medical experts) would waste their time writing about their vaccine "experience" if they weren't true, positive or negative alike. 
I remembered the first time I read about the anti-vaccine's argument on the issue, it really did scared me off vaccines. For a short period of time, I was really worried about making the wrong decisions vaccinating my daughter. Then i went onto reading pro-vaccine sites. Guess what? i got even more confused and lost.  It's crazy how both the pro-vaccination and the anti-vaccination community, use fear mongering into scaring parents into making a decision. I absolutely HATED it.What if she's the "minority" who suffers from adverse reactions if I vaccinate? What if she's the "minority" who will succumb to the "preventable diseases"if I don't vaccinate? What if she suffers from long term side effects of the vaccines? What if she is shunned because she's not vaccinated? So many what ifs on either side of the scale... It's already hard enough being a new parent, add vaccines on top of it, parenting is an extremely stressful job. 
However, if you really think about it, both communities don't exactly have a choice. They can't exactly promote their stance without some form of real life "proof". After all, research and studies can only provide so much information (and it's just too time consuming to read pages and pages of copy), and nothing works better than pictures alongside a real life story. 
I am currently no longer vaccinating my child. I am obviously not pro-vaccine, but I'm also not anti-vaccine per se, I am against the dangerous compounds found in vaccines, and the amount of shots given a little human being at each visit. I'm no biologist or doctor or immunologist, but I'm a mother to a beautiful two year old who is my everything. Sprinkle onto mother instinct some common sense, it is a very plausible theory that our children can be protected from diseases by injecting a concoction of toxic chemicals and inactive viruses/ bacterias into their tiny little bodies, where it bypasses their other mucous membranes that are essential to their overall body defence system. We only build "immunity" within their blood cells (and works only effectively for a short period of time). If a person is exposed to the virus (despite being vaccinated), he/she may still get infected because the first of his/her defence mechanism (mucous membrane and the skin) aren't prepared. Despite that, I readily admit that thousands of people have actually benefited from vaccines, but at what cost? We're forsaking a stronger life long immune system for temporary immunity that may or may not last as long as the experts claim. 
Having said that, I am no expert in immunology. But here are some links from medical doctors, to immunologists, to paediatricians, to nephrologist, etc that you might find useful in making your own judgment about the vaccine issue. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1m3TjokVU4
http://drsuzanne.net/dr-suzanne-humphries-vaccines-vaccination/
http://www.drpalevsky.com/
https://sites.google.com/site/vaccineillusion/ (Dr Tetyana Obukanych)
http://drtenpenny.com/
http://www.askdrsears.com/ (pro-vaccine but at least has information that is more neutral)
http://www.mercola.com/article/vaccines/neurological_damage.htm
http://www.vaccinationcouncil.org/2010/12/15/vaccines-prevention-or-poison/
http://www.drbuttar.com/category/vaccines-2/
I absolutely respect all parents' decision to vaccinate, or don't vaccinate their children. I'm not even asking you not to vaccinate because that would be wrong and unreasonable to interfere with your parenting decisions, but I hope in return that you also do not question my judgment on whether or not I should be vaccinating my child. My goal is to provide my child with a healthy immune foundation so that her body will be able to fight off infections with minimal medical intervention. I am not banning vaccination totally, but it will always remain as a last resort to my children's health and welfare.  
Everything we do and every decision we make, we do it for the love of our children. Don't let your paediatrician or GP make that decision for you, because doctors are trained to treat, not prevent. Measles can be deadly to a minority group of people, but so can the MMR vaccine. Either way, you are taking risks. Do your own readings, understand the diseases, make your own conclusions and decide which risks are more worth taking.I really hope that one day we can all live together harmoniously without having to fear being judged for our vaccination decisions.