Parenting

Anti-vax mum passed on whooping cough to her baby daughter

“If I could turn back time, I would have protected myself.”

After a Gold Coast mum refused the whooping cough vaccine during pregnancy, she tragically contracted the potentially deadly virus and passed it onto her newborn child.

The woman shared her story publically in a video posted on the Gold Coast Health website to warn others about what refusing vaccinations can do.

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“I was a healthy pregnant woman, worked out, went to gym, ate very healthy, had a natural birth and somehow in the last two weeks of my pregnancy I managed to get whooping cough, I didn’t know,” she said.

Cormit soon learnt her daughter Eva was diagnosed with whooping cough.

“She was a bit coughy, but within two weeks the cough became very scary, a horror movie, turning blue, going floppy in my hands, running to hospital,” she said.

“She ended up in intensive care with a baby that just coughs and coughs and coughs and it’s so hard to watch your tiny little thing they go red, they go blue and sometimes they go black and then for a moment you think they are dead in your hands, they flop. A lot of suffering for a tiny little thing you love so much.”

“I was offered the injection in week 28, being the healthy, fit organic woman that I am I said ‘leave me alone’, I said ‘I don’t need this crap’.”

“I got over it very quick, it was not it was nothing for me, but she is into week four and every hour I have to stay here watch her going blue, watch her go blue, watch her cry, and give her oxygen. She is my only child and if I could turn back time I would have protected myself, so that’s my message,” she said.

Amidst the current whooping cough epidemic in Australia, free whooping cough boosters were introduced throughout the country last April for pregnant women.

Let this be a grave lesson to get all children vaccinated.

See Cormit share her story below:

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