Pediatric Care

Childhood Vaccines: The Complete Schedule Every Austin Parent Needs

March 30, 2026 · Dr. Lucia Fernandez, MD, Pediatrics

In my ten years of pediatric practice, I have never had a parent bring their child for a vaccine hoping it wouldn't work. Every parent in that exam room wants the same thing I do — a healthy kid. The conversation about vaccines is not a debate between medicine and doubt; it's usually a conversation between a parent's love and their understandable questions. I welcome every one of those questions.

The CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) publishes the recommended childhood vaccine schedule each year, and it is the most rigorously studied, safety-monitored medical protocol in history. The timing of each vaccine is not arbitrary — it reflects the specific ages when children are most vulnerable to each disease and when their immune systems are mature enough to mount a durable response.

At birth, your newborn receives the Hepatitis B vaccine. Between two and six months, we add DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis), Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type b), IPV (polio), PCV15 or PCV20 (pneumococcal), and rotavirus. The influenza vaccine begins at six months and is recommended annually thereafter. Between 12 and 15 months, MMR (measles, mumps, rubella), varicella, and hepatitis A are added. The four- to six-year well visit includes booster doses of DTaP, IPV, and MMR. Adolescents at age 11–12 receive Tdap, meningococcal, and HPV vaccines.

One of the most common questions I hear is whether giving multiple vaccines at once is safe. The answer is yes — emphatically. Your child's immune system encounters and responds to hundreds of foreign antigens every day just by breathing. The antigens in all the vaccines given at a two-month visit combined represent a fraction of what a child's immune system handles during a single ordinary cold. Multiple vaccines at once mean fewer office visits, fewer needle sticks, and no gap in protection.

Delaying or spacing out vaccines is not a safer alternative — it is a riskier one. The two-month mark is when we give DTaP because pertussis (whooping cough) is most dangerous and most lethal in infants under six months. Delaying that vaccine means leaving a child unprotected during their period of highest vulnerability. I understand the instinct to slow down, but the schedule exists specifically to protect children when they need it most.

If you have questions about any vaccine on the schedule — why it's given when it is, what the ingredients are, what the risks and benefits are — please ask me at your child's next well visit. I will give you the same honest, evidence-based answer I would give my own family. That's the only kind I know how to give.