"I thought, OK, we're going to do it," says Imamura, 39, of Torrance, California. "But we'll do it more slowly so that your body gets used to it and does not face six different things all of a sudden."
Seven years later, Imamura says that his son is a "very healthy" boy who is active and who likes to play sports.
But delaying vaccination is risky. Many pediatricians will tell you that a more gradual approach to vaccinations is better than no vaccination at all, but they offer some wise advice to parents who are considering it.
"Every day you are eligible to receive a vaccine that you do not own, the possibility of an invasive disease remains," said Dr. Charles Golden, medical director of the hospital's primary care network for children from Orange County.
Recent outbreaks of measles, mumps and whooping cough have once again revived the war of words for vaccination.
The quarrel is often described as having two sides: In a camp, the medical establishment, supported by science, strongly encourages the vaccination of children against 14 childhood diseases from the age of 2 years. In the other, a small but noisy minority – so-called anti-vaxers – avoid blows, believing that the risks of vaccines outweigh the dangers of disease.
The idea that there are two opposing camps masks a vast middle ground occupied by nearly a quarter of the parents, who believe in vaccinating their children but who, like the Imamuras, choose to do it more gradually. They are worried about the impact of so many blows on health in such a short time and, in some cases, they give up some vaccines altogether.
Alternative vaccines have been around for years, advocated by some doctors and touted by celebrities like Jenny McCarthy. Donald Trump endorsed the idea at a 2015 Republican presidential debate.
The concept gained great popularity more than a decade ago when Robert W. Sears, pediatrician from Orange County, California, published "The Vaccine Book", in which he included two alternative programs. Both vaccines delay treatment and one of them also allows parents to avoid measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccines, chickenpox, hepatitis A and polio.
Sears' book became the Bible of vaccination for thousands of parents, who accompanied her to their pediatrician. But it should be noted that Sears was punished by the Medical Board of California last year after accusing it of improperly exempting a 2-year-old child from all future vaccinations. He refused to be interviewed for this column.
Imamura, who describes herself as "certainly not an anti-vaxer," says that she and her husband "followed Sears to a T." They have limited the number of vaccines for their son to two per appointment at most, against six in the official calendar. And they jumped at the chicken pox.
She concedes, however: "If there had been outbreaks like this, it would have affected my thinking about the postponement of vaccines."
The ideas promoted by Sears and others fueled the concerns of parents, who feared that the front-loading projectiles could overload their baby's immune system or expose him to toxic levels of chemicals such as mercury aluminum and formaldehyde.
But the scientific evidence does not confirm it. Infectious disease physicians and public health officials say that everyday life poses greater challenges to the immune system of children.
"Touching another human being, crawling around the house, they are exposed to so many things daily, that these vaccines do not add much," says Dr. Pia Pannaraj, Infectious Disease Specialist at the Children's Hospital. from Los Angeles.
The same goes for some of the metals and chemicals contained in vaccines, which vaccination skeptics blame for autism, despite numerous studies finding no link – the most recent published earlier this month .
In the first six months of life, babies consume far more aluminum in bad milk and infant formula than in vaccines, according to public health experts.
"When we look at babies who have received aluminum-containing vaccines, we can not even say that the level has increased," says Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia ( CHOP) and director of the Vaccine Training Center of the hospital. . The same goes for formaldehyde and mercury, he adds.
(Offit co-invented the RotaTeq rotavirus vaccine from Merck, and CHOP sold the royalty for $ 182 million in 2008. CHOP declined to comment on Offit's share.)
Parents concerned about mercury, aluminum or other vaccine ingredients should avoid information shared on social networks, which can be misleading. Instead, consult the Vaccine Education Center on the CHOP website at www.chop.edu by clicking on the "Departments" tab.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also provide a detailed breakdown of the ingredients of each vaccine at www.cdc.gov/vaccines.
If your child is suffering from an illness that you fear is incompatible with vaccination, talk to your pediatrician. The CDC gives very specific guidelines on who should not receive vaccines, including children with immune system deficiencies, who are undergoing chemotherapy, or who are taking certain medications.
If your children are not among them, vaccinate them. This will help prevent epidemics by protecting those who, for medical reasons, have not received the vaccines.
When parents resist, says Pannaraj, she points out that the harmful effects of infections are much more serious than the risks badociated with vaccines. It notes, for example, that the risk of acquiring measles encephalitis is about 1,000 times higher than that badociated with the vaccine.
Yet, side effects occur. Most are mild cases, but serious – albeit rare – are not unknown. To learn more about the potential side effects of vaccines, check the CDC website or talk to your pediatrician.
Emily Lawrence Mendoza, 35, says that after having her second child Elsie, she received her first measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine at the age of 12 months. She caught a fever and developed a rash disease.
It took three visits to urgent care before a doctor acknowledged that Elsie, who is now nearly five years old, could have reacted slightly to the vaccine. After that, Mendoza, of Orange, California, decided to adopt a more gradual vaccination schedule for her third child.
Still, Mendoza says Elsie's side effect made her realize the importance of vaccines: "What if she had been exposed to a full-blown case of measles?"
This story was produced by Kaiser Health News, which publishes California Healthline, a service of the California Health Care Foundation.
