Watching your baby suffer has got to be the worst punishment for any mother. Which is why our hearts break for Rebecca Harreman, whose 4-month-old son has been battling whooping cough for the the better part of a month. She shared a video of her baby's coughing fit along with an angry diatribe only a near-hysterical mom could have written.
Here's the heartbreaking video of the tiny little sick baby fighting for air. It's not hard to understand why the freaked-out mama wants to rant and rave at someone, anyone.
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Okay so I know I said I'd let the hate go. But I'm tired. Damn tired. I've been on duty for over 3 weeks having to wake every single time my baby boy coughs for fear he will stop breathing. Every. Single. Time. I cannot and will not pass that duty to anyone else, because I just can't sleep.So for those of you sitting on the fence on whether to vaccinate yourself and your kids or not... maybe this video will convince you.This is a GOOD coughing fit in a 4 month old with Pertussis, or Whooping Cough - 23 days after his cough started which is when it's supposed to be getting past the bad stage. It lasts for up to 100 days, but a simple cold I passed onto him that I caught from being with him in hospital is making him relapse again :(Now when I say this is good... I mean that's absolutely nothing. Not even long enough to be called a coughing fit. Nothing compared to watching him turn blue from coughing for so long and so much he can't take a single breath...Imagine that in a tiny newborn baby. Can you imagine?! The doctors said he has his age and size and his first vaccination on his side to be able to fight this because there is no real way to treat it - you can only try and get some oxygen in them - that is if they breathe it in... and they have to do that all on their own. I don't care whether you want to try and prove to me that vaccinations and herd immunities don't work. I don't care that vaccinations have side effects, because every person in this world reacts differently to all types of food, products and medicines. I could not care less, even if it is ever proven one day that they don't work.You know why? Because at least at the end of the day I tried to do something to prevent this and not sit there and say "oh well, vaccinations don't work so I'll just sit here and do nothing"... because doing nothing goes against every cell in my body as a mother. Doing nothing is just wrong.So please share this and spread some awareness... not nonsense. This is getting worse because people are not vaccinating!Oh, and no matter what you believe - if you have a cough while out in public - cover your damn effing mouth!!!~End Rant~
Posted by Rebecca Harreman on Friday, November 13, 2015
Harreman wrote in her Facebook post:
This is a GOOD coughing fit in a 4-month-old with Pertussis, or Whooping Cough -- 23 days after his cough started which is when it's supposed to be getting past the bad stage. It lasts for up to 100 days, but a simple cold I passed onto him that I caught from being with him in hospital is making him relapse again.
Exhausted, frightened, and angry, Harreman says she hopes the video helps bring awareness to how devastating whooping cough can be for babies, and begs people to vaccinate their kids.
She makes some good points and makes it crystal clear in her desperate post that whooping cough, also known as pertussis or the "100 day cough," isn't a disease any parents want their kids to catch. It kills nearly 200,000 people -- mostly the very young and very old -- every year.
More From The Stir: Whooping Cough Outbreak: Don't Blame Anti-Vaxxers, Blame the Vaccine
But, the CDC warns, while the whooping cough vaccine -- DTaP -- makes the illness much less severe for those who have it, it doesn't make you completely immune. So in addition to vaccines, people need to use the simplest disease-prevention technique imaginable -- covering your cough.
In the meantime, we hope Rebecca's baby makes a speedy recovery and she gets some sleep soon.
Image via Rebecca Harreman/Facebook