Chook Me!

How come my vaccination to Chicken Pox, does not protect my newborn from the illness ?

My daughter has now been exposed. I have never had chicken pox. Mothers who have had chicken pox give their babies immunities for 8 months. This doesn't make sense to me that my vaccine wouldn't protect her. Any thoughts on this? This is what my dr. told me. Is he wrong?

Public Comments

1. I'm not sure how exactly to explain this, but think of it this way: Your baby has to have lots of immunizations, right? And most of them are the same ones that you had when you were a kid (polio, diphtheria, measles, rubella, mumps, etc.). So you can't pass those onto your baby either...she has to get all those shots herself.
2. I don't know the exact scientific explanation for this, but it is because natural immunity is always stronger than immunity from a vaccine. This is also a problem with the measles vaccine. Before the measles vaccine, mothers would have natural immunity from measles in childhood, which they would pass on to their vulnerable newborns. Now that most new mothers have had the vaccine instead of the disease, their newborns are not protected. Now, with both chickenpox and measles, as well as other childhood diseases for which there are vaccines, the diseases are moving from early childhood, when they were least dangerous, to newborns and adults (when the vaccine immunity wears off), when they are the most dangerous.