Mum shares heartbreaking video of baby with whooping cough
A mother has shared a heartbreaking video of her 18-month-old suffering from whooping cough, which he contracted after she stopped vaccinating him.
The video shows the little boy coughing and crying as he sits in his father’s lap. The boy coughs through the entire video and whimpers while clutching his dummy.
“This is a baby boy struggling to breathe and turning blue with every cough,” his mother Jessica Leigh Boren wrote on Facebook.
“Coughing for over a minute each time. Multiple times an hour. For 5 days. Getting worse by the second.”
Ms Boren, a mum-of-three from Missouri, US, admitted that she stopped vaccinating Brody after being influenced by ‘anti-vaxx’ posts on social media.
“This is a mother that sees ‘anti-vaxx’ all over social media and becomes terrified,” Ms Boren wrote.
“Terrified to ‘pump her baby with poison’.”
After he suffered coughing bouts of five days in a row, Ms Boren took Brody to the emergency room twice. Eventually, he was diagnosed with whooping cough, or pertussis.
Whooping cough, also known as pertussis, is a highly contagious bacterial infection of the lungs and airways.
Commonly known as the ‘100 day cough’, it is most serious in babies under the age of 12 months.
“The condition usually begins with a persistent dry and irritating cough that progresses to intense bouts of coughing,” according to the Australian Government’s Health Direct website.
“Particularly in small children, these bouts can be followed by a distinctive ‘whooping’ noise as the child breathes in, which is how the condition gets its name.”
Ms Boren says that her son was placed in a bio-hazard room and was unable to eat or drink on his own for four days, while being treated for the disease.
“This is Pure Hell,” Ms Boren wrote,
“This is knowing your son could have this cough for up to 100 days and knowing there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Ms Boren posted the video as a warning to other parents, urging them to vaccinate their children.
“This is guilt. Guilt of putting not only my son at risk, but my community too,” Ms Boren wrote.
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“This is NOT bashing the ‘anti-vaxx’ community. Nor placing blame or judgment on anyone.
“The decisions I made were MY decisions. Based purely on my lack of knowledge and fear.
“This is purely to show the consequences of not vaccinating my child correctly.”
