At my last prenatal visit, I got a booster shot for whooping cough (sometimes called pertussis). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends women get a booster in the third trimester of every pregnancy. Whooping cough has been on the rise for years, and there’s an outbreak happening in California, where we live.
Newborns are especially vulnerable to severe complications from the disease, so doctors suggest that anyone who’s going to be in close contact with newborns and isn’t up-to-date also get a booster: fathers, siblings and even visiting grandparents. The strategy is called “cocooning.”
But what do you do when a grandparent doesn't want to get a shot? A lot of people don’t like getting vaccinations, either because they want to avoid the discomfort of a shot in the arm or they don’t believe vaccines are effective. (They are.) It’s a question that comes up more often than I expected in online communities. Many pregnant women insist that grandparents who won’t get pertussis shots won’t be allowed to see the new grandchild. Others argue that you can’t force a medical decision like that on someone else. Throw in the added complication that if you’re a first-time parent, it might be the first time you’ve had to confront your parents about how you plan to raise your child. What a mess.
I’m lucky that most of my daughters’ grandparents are already vaccinated for pertussis: My parents and my mother-in-law came to stay and help us with the baby a few years ago and all got vaccinated at the time. But with all the things occupying us as new parents, we didn't even think to ask my father-in-law, who lives nearby but didn't have any extended stays in our home. As it turns out, he's not a fan of vaccinations, and he insists that he got the flu from his last flu shot. (He didn’t.) Obviously, he hadn't gotten the pertussis booster.
For this baby, we're planning on bringing up the shot with him, but we're not expecting him to actually get one. So what will we do? I surprised myself by deciding that I won't insist he get one in order to see the baby, as long as he doesn't have any cold symptoms when he visits. (Pertussis usually starts as a mild cold that gets progressively worse; by the time most people are diagnosed, they've been sniffling and shedding pertussis bacteria for weeks since they first showed symptoms.) But, who knows? Maybe Grandpa Lesko will surprise us and get the shot for the baby’s sake - or just to avoid the sniffle quarantine policy.
We’ll see.
Previously: Failure to vaccinate linked to pertussis deaths, CDC: More U.S. adults need to get recommended vaccinations, and Whooping cough vaccine's power fades faster than expected
Photo by Ashley Grant
