Immunization Killed My Infant Son

To be honest, I don’t remember all the details of those 24 hours, seven years ago. The ambulance taking my son Toby away. Driving to the hospital, hardly able to see through the stream of tears. Watching the doctors struggle to save his life, and holding him when he had gone, never wanting to let go.

The thing I remember with haunting clarity is my two older children standing at the end of the bed, their eyes bleary from sleep, their chubby fingers clasped together in innocent prayer, as they watched me give CPR to their brother on the bed where only seconds earlier I had been nursing him. And in his cot, just a few feet away, his identical twin cried desperately.

At the hospital, doctors were convinced he was going to recover. I had restarted his heart, and by the time the ambulance arrived he was breathing again. Fourteen hours later he was dead. The ventilator couldn’t breathe for him, so what chance did he have of breathing for himself?

And then came the "whys." Why did he stop breathing again? Why couldn’t the doctors save him? Why did he die?

Welcome to the club.

The following week, while I was still numb with grief, the nightmare started all over again. Only this time it was Zac who stopped breathing, just as his twin had done exactly seven days earlier. He had been given an apnea monitor "just in case," and in the early hours the shrieking alarm rang through the house, jolting us all back to the last time, when Toby had died.

Once again the terrible journey to the hospital.