Whooping cough vaccine. How common is whooping cough anyway ?

[NightSkyWanderer]

I am hesitant about the vaccine.
My midwife is very adamant about pushing the whooping cough vaccine.
What's people's opinion on whopping cough? To be honest I'm rather reluctant to take a vaccine for something I'd never even heard about before. Midwife says it's common but at almost 40 years of age I've never had whooping cough so it begs me to wonder how common is it really? While i want my baby to be safe and I'm not opposed to all vaccines in life, however I am against having vaccines while I'm pregnant. I've already declined the flu vaccines and covid vaccines due to horrible responses from both past injections.
Since becoming pregnant I'm hardly out of the house , I'm fortune enough to be at home during the day and I only go out once in a while to supermarket. Ive stopped socialising and I've become somewhat of a hermit due to exhaustion and fear of exposure to virus's ect while pregnant so really wouldn't my risk be low anyway ?
I'd value some other opinions as to your experiences

There are videos online of young children with whooping cough. They are terrible to watch.

I had the vaccine when pregnant with my children. No side effects whatsoever.

Get the vaccine.

It had been almost eradicated but because people are not getting their children vaccinated it is back again and becoming very common.It is dangerous for babies and horrible for everyone.
Your midwife has suggested you get vaccinated to protect your baby until they are old enough to be vaccinated. Previously they were protected because everyone else had been vaccinated so it wasn't circulating. Sadly that isn't the case now

Good decision OP. Wishing you well in your pregnancy.

@NightSkyWanderer . I've recently had it. No side effects at all. Get the vaccine

In UK the vaccine was rolled out to pregnant women in 2012, because 14 babies, too young to be vaccinated themselves, died of whooping cough.

Some other countries had started earlier than that.

The vaccine stimulates your immune system to respond, and the antibodies you produce pass to your baby and confer some protection during the first weeks before their own vaccination.

The reason the MW is "pushing" it will be because she is doing all she can to prevent avoidable deaths in newborns

Fuck the side effects of the vaccine. Watch that video and then book yourself in and pray that is enough to protect your baby.

I had whooping cough as an adult about ten years ago. I have permanent damage from it. I know exactly how that poor baby in the video felt. It is a horrific disease well worth some vaccine side effects.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/general_health/4978975-i-think-i-have-whooping-cough?page=1

I think I've probably got it. Will be back at the doctor's next week as cough is still going on after 3 weeks.

I’ve had it twice. I was 6yo the first time and very ill for weeks and quite ill for months. I used to spend my nights wishing I would die as I hurt so much.

I wish pregnant women had been revaccinated when I was expecting my first DD.
I was actually suffering from whooping cough when I gave birth to her. They didn't test me for whooping cough until a couple of days after she was born, even though I had told them that I was sure that I had it.
When the positive test came back, I was sent home (Dd was a few weeks premature and had jaundice) , and I didn't see her again for nearly two weeks. The hospital said it was highly likely she would have caught it from me, but fortunately she escaped that. My DH would take my expressed milk to the hospital and was able to feed her, cuddle her and change her. When I next saw her, she had gone from 5 and a half pounds to eight and a quarter, and looked nothing like the baby I had left. I honestly did not recognise her. It was decades before mobile phones or electronic cameras, although I had been given a couple of polaroid photos. I think we both suffered from those missing early cuddles, and I found it very difficult and painful to reestablish breast feeding.
To say nothing of having multiple stitches after a perineal tear at the same time as coughing my guts out!
I still feel quite emotional when I think of that time even though I am in my seventies now, and DD is 45!

OP the reason you don’t know of many babies who have had it is because of vaccines.
the more people that don’t get vaccines, the less well the ‘herd’ is protected as unvaccinated children then go and pick it up and pass it around.
No vaccine works 100% but it will help and you do not want your tiny baby to get whooping cough when there is something you can do to prevent it.
I think people are forgetting there is a public health aspect to vaccines and are purely thinking of themselves or their children when making decisions. Short term side effects are infinitely better than a life threatening illness in a newborn baby.
wishing you well with your pregnancy.

Do you normally struggle with thinking? It's not common because of the vaccine. You're being incredibly selfish. What a lovely way to approach parenting.

I had whooping cough as a baby (pre vaccine). I nearly died. My late mum remembered recognising my cry as she came to visit me in hospital.
As a consequence of the whooping cough, I suffered febrile convulsions which lead me to developing epilepsy.
But if you've read on the internet that it's no biggie, then, good luck to you.

at almost 40 years of age I've never had whooping cough so it begs me to wonder how common is it really?

You're probably vaccinated against it.

I was waiting in A&E once and a couple brought in a baby in a carrier with whooping cough (very distinctive cough sound). The receptionists peered over the desk, took one look at the baby, one of receptionists stood up, and said to the parents "follow me now. Run" and literally sprinted down the hallway with the baby. I assume the baby was a very worrying colour or something.

OP, there is tons of research and videos that can explain the huge benefits of the vaccine and how dangerous whooping cough can be to a small child. Surely MN is a lot less reliable source of information than the numerous horror stories that you can read on the web about children falling gravelly ill with WC? No offence to you, but as an expectant mum of my second child I am sometimes amazed how unprepared pregnant women are when it comes to simple things like whooping cough vaccine during pregnancy. Even the NHS website can give you a pretty trustworthy information to make you vaccinate your child, so why ask strangers on the web?
I had the vaccine when I was pregnant with my first one and am having it again next week to protect my second baby, WC can be lethal without vaccination and I am definitely not prepared to take the risk.

Increasingly common. In the news just this week. Get the vaccination.

People have said having had it in their youth, their lungs are permanently compromised and tyres have suffered ever since. Everytime they get a cold for example they struggle.

A colleague has been off work for weeks with it. Clearly very unpleasant. Made me very glad (even just for my own sake) that I'd had the vaccine shortly before! And I'm glad to know the baby will have some protection, having seen how unwell it can make an adult.

Three of my kids (who'd all been vaccinated) got whooping cough. Simultaneously. One was so ill she was off school for half a term, couldn't walk without coughing herself sick. The other two were less badly impacted but, for about three weeks the three of them coughed themselves sick every night - I didn't sleep for more than half an hour at a time for having to leap up to sort out yet another sicked on bed.

And that was WITH BEING VACCINATED. I dread to think what would have happened if I'd decided not to bother...

Please get the vaccine.

I had whooping cough about 4 years ago and it was awful, truly scary and that was me as an adult and a nurse. 🥴

It feels as though your whole respiratory system is paralysed (which it is) there's no way of getting air on or out and it really feels as though your going to die. I'm not a dramatic person but it was terrifying.

It's also known as the 100 day cough and I had it every one of those hundred days. I couldn't drive as when an attack started, there was nothing I could do, including breathe.

My lungs hand breathing have not been the same since so I've obviously been left with some scarring and I've been left with the whoop at times too.

Please get the vaccine. I was vaccinated as a child but it had obviously worn off and cases are on the increase. Don't take the chance.

If there's a chance to give your unborn baby the best start my minimising their risk to a life threatening condition that kills babies, why wouldn't you jump at the chance at taking it?

Boggles my mind. It isn't about you, or the side effects for you..

It's about doing the right thing for your unborn baby and their safety.

For goodness sake! Nobody has had it because everyone's been vaccinated!!

Are you really that stupid and lack understanding of how vaccines work? If people start refusing vaccinations then whooping cough becomes more prevalent and you will certainly see more cases.

It's what's happening with measles and rubella.
Please tell me you'll get those vaccines.

There were only around 700 cases in the uk last year

It used to be a big killer of babies

So yes it's unusual
This is because people took the vaccine

Google "Light for Riley", it was set up by a couple who lost their baby to whooping cough to raise awareness on the importance of being vaccinated in pregnancy.

As for side effects, I had a sore arm when I got it, only lasted a few hours.

I really don’t understand why you wouldn’t get it? Don’t you want to protect your baby and for them to have the best start in life? Do you think you know better than scientists/doctors/midwives?

I had zero side effects from it apart from a slightly sore arm because of where they administered the vaccine. Same with the flu jab. It’s the same vaccine you were likely given as a baby, hence why you didn’t get whooping cough. But you need a top up of it to pass on to baby when they are born but too small to receive their own vaccine.

I would recommend you get the whooping vaccine. It's protects u and baby.
My mum's mum never got it and when my mum was young she had whooping cough that almost cost her life.