Olivia’s Story – Whooping Cough

My daughter was just 3 weeks old when she had a runny nose and sneeze, with mildly not wanting feeds as much. This went on for a few days but I knew the early symptoms of whooping cough (thanks to light for Riley) so I took her to the doctor, the doctor didn’t want to swab her stating she was very healthy but I insisted and had to convince the doctor to do a swab. Overnight she got dramatically worse, her nose was completely blocked, she wouldn’t take feeds, mild cough, sneezing all the time, and was so tired and fatigued.

The next morning we got the call that the test was positive – my daughter had whooping cough, and she was admitted to hospital. At the hospital we were warned this could be a long haul, and they just didn’t know what would happen with my daughter being so small and how she would cope with the disease. Well, thanks to catching it early and the pregnancy booster my daughter never even got the horrible whooping cough, ‘cough’ and never even required oxygen in hospital. One of the doctors said they had never seen such a young baby fight it so amazingly well, with the nurses saying that they had never seen a baby cope so well. We left hospital when she was 4 weeks old after only a 3 day stay. She is now a healthy 6 month old.

I can honestly say if I hadn’t had my pregnancy booster or caught whooping cough early my daughter might not be here with us today. Early intervention and immunisations DO help.