Whooping Cough

I just read a news byte on Yahoo! informing me of an outbreak of Whooping Cough also known as Pertussis that has become a serious epidemic in California and has spread through Texas. It's most dangerous and even deadly to infants, one of which I am about to have. This has made my very pregnant self a bit paranoid and rather cranky. Whooping Cough is one of the nasty diseases that can kill kids and yet there are still people out there who refuse to vaccinate their children for it. I have some mixed feelings on blanket vaccinations and I did not participate in the H1N1 vaccine push. We only get the flu vaccine in the years when I'm pregnant or when our Pediatrician (who I respect very much for his 30+ years of experience dealing with healthy and sick kids) has strongly encouraged it. If I remember right, that means Krista, my almost 10 year old, has had a flu vaccine twice in her life and I've had it 4 times. The flu is crummy but if you're in pretty good health and take a few precautions it's not deadly. Also, even with the vaccine you can get the flu and spread the flu so in my mind it's kind of "optional". Vaccines like Chicken Pox I go for because it wasn't around when I was a kid and I still have scars from that thrilling two week experience, also I have guilt for having been the one to give the Chicken Pox to my entire Kindergarten class after picking it up somewhere else. The vaccines for diseases that kill you slowly and in nasty ways are pretty much mandatory in my mind. Look what they did with Polio. My grandfather had it and barely survived and it left him with serious health problems for the rest of his life. Now it's pretty much wiped out. To me, that says a lot. I don't want my baby to end up with Whooping Cough because it's still being spread by those who refuse to vaccinate against it. Well, enough of that soapbox for one evening.