Posted on 02/23/2026 8:50:11 PM PST by DoodleBob
DEAR ABBY: I am having a baby in five months. My doctor is recommending that anyone who visits the baby in the first three months be up to date on vaccines (Tdap, flu, COVID and RSV, if age 60-plus). We have decided to follow our doctor’s recommendations.
Some of my family members are resistant to getting these vaccines and want us to consider other options, like testing and wearing a mask, which is not as safe. Also, it would be hard for younger kids to do — my niece is 3. Abby, we vaccinated our young children (3 and 5) at the time when our niece was born, as part of what my sister requested.
I am already stressed about this situation and do not want to talk it to death with my family, and I have grown resentful because of it. In the past, I have set boundaries with my family, and most of them have not been understood or received well. Can you offer me some guidance? — EXPECTING IN WASHINGTON
DEAR EXPECTING: I am happy to try. When your baby arrives, the responsibility for its welfare will rest mostly on you, the mother. Follow your doctor’s medical advice to protect your child. If family members don’t want to respect your wishes and do what they must to avoid endangering your baby (as you did for them), realize you can’t change their minds, and keep your distance for the first three months.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Mrs. AWFUL, what about the medical recommendations received by your relatives from THEIR medical providers regarding whether vaxing for them is appropriate or not? ... does that count for anything? ... a
nd besides, why should YOU dictate what medical treatments your relatives MUST undergo to visit with your perfectly healthy baby? ...
and why are you just demanding vaxing? ... shouldn’t you also demand your relatives undergo a whole battery of tests to make sure they aren’t carrying anything that might jump off onto your baby? ...
maybe also demand that they prove that all of their clothing is laundered before the visit and that they took a bath or shower within one hour of the visit?
change doctors!
Dear Abby is still a thing? Good grief; I thought she and Ann were long gone. I wonder what woke person is writing that column now?
And people are still going on about Covid shots? How 2021. 🙄
I feel sorry for the baby.
I hope the mother is planning to breastfeed exclusively for the first 3-6 months. That’s the best way to protect her baby naturally.
Time to find a new pediatrician. Any physician that recommends that a low risk infant be vaccinated against COVID is not to be trusted with your child’s health.
"Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at http://www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069."
Exactly.
What foolishness in light of what we know about vaccines and Covid these days!
What a manipulator, hanging visiting privileges over their heads in a bid to force compliance with her wishes. If this is real, and after seeing the number of mask compliant sheeple in public yet I think it can be, that poor kid does not stand a chance.
For the first three months, the best thing is to keep the baby home and recover and bond with it.
I wonder if the baby is going in daycare and if she’s going to demand everyone in the day care comply with her childish demands.
Monty Python was on top of it in "The Meaning of Life: Birth" where it's all about justifying expenses.
Doctor: "Show it to the mother. Sedate her. Number the child. And isolate it!" (Incubator slams shut)
Mother: "Is it a boy or a girl?"
Doctor: "Its a little early to impose roles now, don't you think?"
VERY prescient for 1983!
What? Only half? :-)
Oh, you must mean the Republican women. Democrat women are 100% lunatics. I live in Ithaca NY, I know whereof I speak. :-)
Maybe for now Abby’s daughter Jeanne is writing the column, but shortly it will be taken over by an AI identity which will analyze all past columns and synthesize replies in the same general tone and style, forever and ever.
Think I’m kidding or being sarcastic? Nope, it’s real. Meta/Facebook has the patent, granted this past Dec 2025, to allow Facebook to continue posting on your page, as if it was you, not just text posts and comments, but audio and video, using your voice and image — AFTER YOU DIE.
Dear Abby has become immortal.
There is no kid in the world I want to see bad enough to get vaxxed. Make that no person in the world.
I feel sorry for this baby. the expectant mom is not mentally healthy if she is thinking her doctor is right in suggesting this of her family/relatives.
You've got that right. It's often tiresome and sometimes plain hurtful; and they really don't know everything, in spite of what they think.
Pronto.
Most likely. That’s how braindead she is.
Trust me, there's little to choose from these days, ever since the Fair Sex has gotten “empowered.” There's nothing worse, according to the Bible, than a former servant who becomes a king. (Or a queen, in the case of today's young women.) Not that they were only a servant before. But at one time, the marriage covenant was that both served one another, and both served the Lord. That's all gone to heck in the cloud.
you would be surprised at the peekchu look that you will see from theses family members when you say ok and then do not engage but instead just leave them alone. most thrive on Kaos and they are looking to get family members to engage in there crazy.
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