News Moms Need

It’s the tail end of my pregnancy and I’ve been busy getting all sorts of things ready to welcome our second baby. One thing I recently crossed off my to-do list was to have all of us (my husband, our daughter and me) get our yearly flu vaccine to protect us from flu.

Getting the flu is more than just having the sniffles or a cough. I got the flu once several years ago and it completely wiped me out! I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. I had trouble breathing, no appetite, fever and chills, and was always exhausted even though I slept for most of the day. I was so sick that I never want to get the flu again!

It’s important for everyone to get the flu vaccine, but that’s especially true if you’re pregnant. That’s because you’re much more likely to have serious health complications from flu during pregnancy. Some health complications include miscarriage, preterm labor, premature birth or having a low-birthweight baby. In some cases, flu during pregnancy can even be deadly.

Don’t forget to have your partner and other children get their flu vaccine, too. Babies can get their first flu vaccine at age 6 months. But for us, our newborn baby will be too young to get his or her flu vaccine for much of this year’s flu season. So, the best way to protect our new baby and the rest of us from flu is to make sure the whole family gets the flu vaccine.

If you have any questions about getting the flu vaccine, talk to your health provider. Learn more about vaccinations during pregnancy and your baby’s vaccinations. Visit flu.gov for more information on flu.

My husband and I were watching the news last night and we saw a story about pertussis (whooping cough) and how cases could reach their highest level in 50 years. In Washington State, there’s been over a 1,300% increase in the last year alone!

Pertussis is a very contagious disease caused by bacteria. Many of those who are sick include babies who haven’t been fully vaccinated against pertussis yet. With a toddler at home and another baby on the way, I immediately began scanning my memory to remember if my husband and I had gotten our Tdap vaccine (which protects against pertussis).

Most children get their series of pertussis vaccines as part of their regular childhood vaccination schedule. But teens and adults need to be sure to get a booster Tdap vaccine to keep them protected against pertussis. And since babies need several rounds of the pertussis vaccine before they’re immune, they are especially vulnerable to pertussis.   In babies, pertussis can be very dangerous, even deadly.  Babies often get it from older children or adults who unknowingly have the illness. Because of the rapidly growing number of pertussis cases nationwide, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now recommends that all teens and adults get a booster Tdap vaccine.

I called our doctor’s office this morning to see if they had any record of us getting our Tdap vaccine. It turns out that in preparation for welcoming our first-born to the family, we each got our Tdap vaccine a couple of years ago. PHEW! But if you haven’t had your booster recently or you can’t remember, be sure to get your Tdap vaccine. If you’re pregnant, you can still get your Tdap vaccination during pregnancy.

Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) will long be remembered as one of the key members of the United States Supreme Court, serving as an associate justice from 1967 to 1991. He was the first African-American justice of the Supreme Court, appointed by President Lyndon Johnson after an illustrious career as an attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1954, the year in which the March of Dimes polio vaccine field trial was under way to test the effectiveness of the vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk, Thurgood Marshall argued as an NAACP lawyer his most famous case before the Supreme Court. In Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, the court issued a landmark decision which effectively rendered racial discrimination in public education illegal in the United States.

Brown v. Board of Education and the Salk polio vaccine field trial both changed America for the better. The first ensured that African-Americans could not be prevented from attending the same schools as whites. The second ushered in a period of polio immunization led by the March of Dimes that ended the threat of polio in the U.S. within a few short years. Thurgood Marshall, seen in the 1957 photo here with his wife and young son, supported our efforts by rolling up his sleeve to get his “Salk shot” as did countless thousands of others in the drive to defeat polio. Marshall, along with many other black celebrities from the worlds of sports, art, entertainment, and politics either gave performances in support of the March of Dimes or posed for photos in vaccination scenes that expressed a clear message: getting vaccinated was the only way to prevent paralytic polio and the lifelong disabilities that it could cause.

Charles H. Bynum, our Director for Inter-Racial Relations in the 1950s, was the person responsible for recruiting black celebrities to the fight against polio. Mr. Bynum and the March of Dimes made polio care a civil rights issue, and stars like Ella Fitzgerald, Willie Mays, and Jackie Robinson enthusiastically supported the Foundation to uphold its pledge that polio care would be offered equally to all. Thurgood Marshall was among these, and his endorsement of the Salk polio vaccine and the March of Dimes is implicit in his appearance in this historic photo. Today, in its mission to prevent birth defects and premature birth, the March of Dimes continues to provide current information about vaccination during pregnancy as well as childhood vaccination, as one of the many important ways to promote maternal and child health. We are proud to say that Justice Thurgood Marshall is prominent in this historic effort.