4 months +

On Wednesday Nico got her 4 month-ish check-up. Everything checked out fine.


She's a bit on the small side for her age: weight = 6155 grams (or 13.6 lbs), height = 60.3 cm (or 23.7 in); but well within the average.


Developmentally she's doing good: holding her head up nicely, tracking with her eyes, grabbing stuff, giggling, babbling, smiling and just being an overall cutie-pie.

But now starts all the immunizations (they start later here in Japan) and we've got a difficult decision to make. We're planning on following the Japanese immunization schedule for Nico as it's fairly similar to the U.S. schedule. But it's got a couple of major differences... and the biggie we're trying to decide within the next couple of months is whether or not she should get the BCG vaccine. It's for tuberculosis, which while in steady decline for the past several decades, has shown a slight uptick recently here in Japan. We'd like to give Nico all the protection we can while we're here so it's seems like the thing to do. However, not everyone agrees it's an effective treatment.

On the other hand, if she does get the vaccine and when we or she returns to the States, every routine health exam where they test for TB, she'll show as positive (because of the presence of the vaccine, ie: dead virii... is that a word?). That means a lifetime of hassle taking unnecessary medication and chest xrays to prove "all clear". Miyuki had an adult (Japanese) friend in NYC who had to go on a 9 month drug regimen just to convince her doctors of being cured of the TB she never had.

So we're still not sure what to do... protection now, here, for a lifetime of potential hassles there? ...Just not sure.

Tags: Japan | babies | health | vaccine | tuberculosis | BCG