When your baby is six weeks old, it is recommended they have three vaccines: combined (or hexavalent) DTPa-Hib-IPV-HepB, 13vPCV, and rotavirus.

Only two of the vaccines are needles, usually given in babies’ legs. The other vaccine is given as drops put into your baby’s mouth to swallow.

When your baby is six months old, another dose of the combined DTPa-Hib-IPV-HepB vaccine they had at six weeks and four months is recommended. Each dose strengthens your baby’s immunity to diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, Hib, polio and hepatitis B. The vaccine is given as a needle, usually in baby’s leg.

What will happen when I get there?

How can I make it easier for my child?

I’ve got a fair amount of faith in my doctor and I tend to trust what she says and trust her opinion, so I think that I would believe what she would say before I’d believe anything I saw on TV.

‘Emily’, Sydney, 1999

In 1999, I first began studying the impact of vaccination debates on parents. Mums like Emily would talk about how they relied on their GPs or other health professionals when negotiating worrying information about vaccination they had heard elsewhere.