Whooping cough symptoms in babies

The early whooping cough symptoms in babies could be similar with common cold such as low-grade fever, mild cough, runny nose, and sneezing. These symptoms may persist for up to two weeks before the worst and violent cough come. If you have baby that showing those signs for several days without significant health improvement, meet your doctor soon to get a proper diagnose and treatment.

Expert classifies whooping cough as a very serious health problem for babies especially those who aged less than six months. This condition also categorized as life threatening for elders and people with immune system problem.  This whooping cough or also known as pertussis is a contagious respiratory infection that caused by Bordetella pertussis bacterium.

The bacterium could be transmitted from infected person through air-borne droplets when the infected person sneezes or coughing. Avoid to exposing babies to those who infected with the disease can cut the way of disease transmission. To protect your children from the infection, vaccination are often strongly recommended.

When a baby infected by Bordetella pertussis, the incubation period will take time between 6-20 days. For those days often the baby may experience symptoms just like stated above including fever, mild-cough, sneeze and runny nose. The real whooping cough symptoms in babies start to rising after the incubation period is obtained. Severe and violent cough for 20-30 seconds nonstop followed by struggle to breath that causing ‘whoop’ noise.

The breath difficulties may cause baby’s nails and lips turn to bluish, this condition is caused by lack of oxygen. Beside those violent cough and ‘whoop’ noise, affected babies may also vomit a thick mucus. To identify the real problem, often doctor will take mucus sample for further test in the lab. Some of other test may be provided to convince the presence of the infection.

To reduce and eliminate whooping cough signs in baby, often doctor will prescribe antibiotics. Commonly the treatment will be started to begin before the test result. According to The Better Health Channel website, untreated condition may lead to severe whooping cough complications such as inflammation of the brain, permanent brain damage, pneumonia, apnoea or stopping breathing for long periods and death.

To prevent the presence of whooping cough symptoms in babies, giving certain vaccine which designed to against the infection is necessary. Commonly the vaccine is given to the children with two, four, and six months of age. The second stage of vaccination is commonly given to the children with four years of age, combined with tetanus, diphtheria, and polio vaccine.