When I was pregnant, my pronoun shifted automatically. My “I” turned into “we,” as in, “What are we going to eat for dinner?” and, “Should we sit in that hot tub?
” I thought about that shift to the majestic plural as we got our Tdap shot in our third trimester.The Tdap vaccine protects against tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis, or whooping cough. Doctors recommend that women receive a dose with each pregnancy because the diseases can be particularly dangerous for young babies. But good, hard evidence for the benefits of vaccinating women while pregnant instead of shortly after giving birth has been lacking. A new study of nearly 150,000 newborns fills that gap for whooping cough.
Researchers at the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center in Oakland, Calif., studied the medical records of mothers who gave birth to babies between 2010 and 2015. Overall, about 46 percent of the mothers received a Tdap vaccine at least 8 days before giving birth.
Seventeen of the 150,000 babies got whooping cough by the time…
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