Sandra Tanrikulu, an Australian mother of two, recently took to her usually-private Facebook to share a video publicly.
The contents of the video are incredibly personal; Tanrikulu recorded one of her five-week-old daughter’s most recent episodes of whooping cough.
The cough came on suddenly, shocking both Tanrikulu and her husband. Neither of them had realized how “scary and dangerous” whooping cough could be to babies who were too young to be vaccinated.
Generally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advise mothers-to-be to get vaccinated for pertussis (the medical name for whooping cough) during the third trimester of their pregnancy.
Newborn infants are too young to receive the vaccine; they have to wait two months before they can be vaccinated.
Mothers, however, can get the vaccination and pass this onto their child during pregnancy through the umbilical cord.
For Tanrikulu, who didn’t receive the vaccination, and her child, who is still too young to be vaccinated, there is little to be done aside from wait and take care of her daughter’s symptoms as they appear.
“The scary symptom for babies,” Tanrikulu writes in her Facebook post, “is when they don't cough but silently choke and turn blue/purple from lack of oxygen. If we weren't in hospital and sitting watching our baby 24/7 the outcome would be fatal.”
She concludes her post by beseeching other parents to not ignore any warning signs – even if it seems to be the subtlest of coughs – and to get the vaccination during pregnancy.
You can see Tanrikulu’s original post and video here:
