travelling to india with a 6 month old - am i nuts???

[cityoflight]

hi all,

i have a 2 month old boy and haven't given him any vaccinations (nor am i planning to until he's at least a bit older) and my husband wants us to go visit friends in delhi and rajasthan in december.

on the one hand, our baby will (hopefully) still be breastfeeding and therefore safe from tummy bugs, plus he won't be crawling around getting into trouble; on the other hand, i'm worried that he will be more susceptible
to things like malaria and polio (i have had malaria twice - would i be giving him some antibodies through my milk?) i'd like to hear back from anyone who has travelled to india or anywhere similar with a baby and see if this trip is a complete no-no or not!

thanks x

[tamarab30]

Hi cityoflight
No experience or advice to give, but I certainly would love to go to India!

[kime]

Hi cityoflight,
Have you been to India yourself before? Maybe you have developed some antibodies to the different bugs.
Both me and my brother have been to India on seperate occassions and both of us ended up sick with something. I think India is one of those places that you will probably pick up something just because their society is so different from ours : ie cows wandering the streets, meat sold on the street (without refrigeration), pit toilets and a whole host of bugs we don't have in here in Australia (not sure where your from). I would be very cautious before I took a baby there. If you get sick you will have less breastmilk to feed baby because you will be dehydrated. And because baby is smaller they have less reserves and more immature systems to cope with things like this. I am no expert in how not immunising works but I think part of what helps your baby's immune system grow strong is naturally slowly being exposed to things in our society and building immunity that way.
I hope that helps.

[learnermum]

Hi,

I travelled with my 9 month old to Sri Lanka although he is vaccinated. I spoke to lots of different sources, my own Gp,nurse, pediatrition(sp?) and a couple of Vac helplines all of which said he would be fine if fully breastfead.
DS was crawling around, which made it a bit more difficult, but I was just ultra aware of where i put him down and giving his hands a clean when he got up, before eating etc! I steralised everything and boiled all water before I used it, even the bottled stuff!! I also used some natural mozzie repellant on a muslin sheet to drap over the top of the pram at dusk as thats when the mozzies are at there worst, not sure if it helped but it made me feel like I was trying something, also took at natural robocan which is a mozzie repellant that sprays into the atmosphere. DS didn't get one bite, but i wasn't so lucky! so again not too sure on how effective it was??

I was quite nervous before we left but it wasn't nearly as bad as I had thought.

My other main concern was a car seat as we couldn't take ours because of the anchor point. So had to get one there, it wasn't the best and they drive like maniacs!!

Not sure that has helped you make up your mind or not, Goodluck anyway.
I would love to be jetting off

[Jakaluma]

I would go, but I would get appropriate vaxes done. That doesn't mean all the vaxes on the schedule in Australia, but selective ones

What I would look at would be
1. what diseases are fairly common in India
2. is there a way to prevent them (eg malaria prophylactic, vax for polio)
3. is this effective (eg some vaxes aren't very effective, some are close to 100%) especially short term (since that'll be when you're there)
4. how treatable is the disease if you do get it (eg polio isn't very treatable, typhoid is very treatable with antibiotics)

Not sure of India, but I suspect polio and hep a and b would be good ones to start looking into.

[Bronnie]

i wouldn't go, for me it's not worth the risk. one mum (who used to be a member here i think) went and her baby got quite ill. parasite if i remember correctly.

[hanabi]

If bub is exclusively breastfed, the chances of a parasitic infection are almost nil.

We travelled with an unvax'd 4 month old through the south of china and had no issues whatsoever. Take care with bath water, and exposure to other babies and small children, but I think a baby at that age would be quite safe from infectious diseases with the proper precautions.

Yeah, I agree about the travel issues though. Many of our trips were with an unrestrained baby in a taxi. A baby sling comes in handy at those times.

[leela29]

I've been to India many times. Haven't been with a baby yet, but will be in December too. My boy will be 13 months. Like i said, been to India many times and can understand your concern. My brother and sister in-law take their two children every year, from when the first was 7 mth (he's now 5 and the youngest is 2). they were both vaccinated, (but i do know they had friends who travelled to india with unvaccinated children. sorry i don't know any of their stories.) She was FBF and said it was a great help, as they didn't get sick. When their first stopped BF (he was almost 2)that year he did catch a nasty stomach bug. I was there with them that year and it caused them a lot of stress, especially because they wanted to try natural remedies, of which none worked. When they finally went to see the local doctor he prescribed a medicine which the local kids with the same symptoms were usually given, and it worked. i don't think you should worry too much as your bub won't be crawling(maybe) and you'll be BF. Of course you have to be careful with accidentally drinking bath water. You having had malaria doesn't make baby less likely to catch it as there are many different types of malaria and you will only have the antibodies for that type. Not sure if they pass into breastmilk anyway. Delhi in December is cold, so i wouldn't worry too much about malaria. Not sure about rajasthan as it's usually hot there, but december is a cooler period for all of india anyway, so you may be able to keep baby covered, lessening the likelihood of mozzie bites. i wouldn't not go to india because of these concerns. Trust that when you're there you'll know how best to protect your bub, just as you know best how to protect bub here. Try to get a bit more information about the areas you'll be visiting, and try to speak to others who have been. Good luck!

[Greenmama2AJ]

I agree - I think your biggest concern will be looking after your own health.
If you caught a gastro bug like Dehli belly you'd feel like complete crap for about 4 days, have to run to drop pit toilets and probably end up just a little dehydrated and feverish.
Everyone I know who has gone to India has fallen ill for a breif portion of their stay (although they've all had an amazing time) which would make looking after a LO difficult.

I'm not too sure that you could vax for all of the common bugs either.
You could vax for polio and HepB by 6 months.
But I would worry about the other forms of Hepatitis that are more common in foul water like HepA.
I also read just the other day that our last measles outbreak in Australia in 1996 was imported from a group visiting from India, where measles is very common. Measles is the 5th largest killer of children worldwide today (I've just given DS the 1 yr MMR vaccine - so I read up on it, lol)

But India is an amazing place well worth a visit. With 3 billion people it must be possible for LO's to survive, lol

[meitaimama]

I just found this thread... thought I'd drop in with my 2c and a few questions.

We went to India with dd1 for 6 months when she was 6mo. We had a few concerns but ultimately thought it was worth the risk. We've both lived in India before and dh was born and brought up there. If we hadn't come to australia a few years ago we would probably still be living in India and our kids would have been born there, so it seemed silly to worry excessively.

She was EBF until 1yo as she had no interest in solids, but she still got a bit of gastro.... probably from crawling on dirty floors or being touched by dirty hands. If you have a problem with people touching/holding your child then don't go to India! We tried to keep her hands clean but honestly I would have gone nuts if I'd aimed to have a sterile environment.

We also went to India for a month last Dec with dd1 2.5yo. She got diarrhoea but wasn't too bad. I was really sick with vomiting/diarrhoea but my milk supply was fine the whole time.

Drs in india love to prescribe antibiotics for everything. I would avoid drs, get stool specimens tested and then self-medicate. You can get most drugs w/o a prescription and pharmacists usually know their stuff.

Lack of car seats was the major worry for us too!

We're going to India again next month with our 2mo too... she will be vaxed with polio and dtp. These are the ones we believe are a serious health risk, based on dh's experience as a public health nurse in India. Not sure about the others yet.... any advice? dd1 was fully vaxed but we've become more wary of vaxing since then.