Yes, my 9-month-old has already had his first COVID vaccine

Everyone has a pandemic story. Mine is no worse than anyone else’s, but it may be a little different.

I’m an infectious disease physician assistant. I got COVID. I miscarried during the pandemic. Now I’m a new mother — and 9-month-old Jacob has had his first COVID vaccine shot.

I am thrilled that we finally have a COVID vaccine for children under age 5. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, three doses of the Pfizer vaccine — or two doses of the Moderna vaccine — are safe for children at least 6 months old.

The arrival of the vaccine for the nation’s youngest means my son could be shielded from the worst COVID can deliver. The disease has killed more than 400 U.S. kids age 4 and under. Others have developed serious symptoms and have been hospitalized. Long COVID can strike children with lingering chest pain, brain fog and other complications.

While it felt like much of the world has moved on, some parents with small kids were still living as my family did in 2020, avoiding eating in restaurants and other situations where we could contract COVID and infect our children. I’m still thinking about those Hamilton tickets we sold during a spike in cases.

I sobbed in relief when I heard the CDC’s approval announcement on June 18. But I was cautious as we led up to this moment. I wasn’t willing to give my infant a vaccine until I was confident about its safety and efficacy.

In my review of the clinical trial data, I considered safety first. How many children had reactions? What did those reactions look like? And how frequently did they occur? Then I looked at the strength of the immune response. If I’m going to jab my 9-month-old, I want to do it for a purpose.

The clinical trials revealed thousands of kids were able to safely receive the vaccine, and it provided the protection I’d longed for to keep my son safe.

I’ve seen what COVID can do. In the hospital, we have treated COVID patients who thought they were through the worst of it and then suddenly they couldn’t breathe.

My own battle with COVID left me changed. On Sept. 18, 2020, prior to arrival of the vaccine, I awoke with a fever and stabbing headache from the coronavirus. Newly pregnant, I spent the next 10 days in isolation while miscarrying our first baby. Those days were the most difficult of my life, not knowing if I’d infected my husband and not being able to mourn the loss of our baby together.

The grief was compounded by the fear of suffering complications I’d seen firsthand in many patients. I’ll never know whether COVID played a role in my miscarriage or if it would have happened anyway, but I’ll never be able to disentangle the two. One year to the day after my COVID diagnosis, Jacob was born.

My experience, training and research have led me to this point: I enthusiastically recommend the COVID vaccine for children 4 and under. Some kids will experience side effects like mild soreness at the injection site, drowsiness or a general feeling of discomfort, as they do with other vaccines. But the risk of a little discomfort is well worth it, in my view.

As new variants have emerged, vaccination won’t prevent every case of COVID. The goal is to lessen the chances it will cause serious illness, hospitalization and death. And, there’s something important to remember here: We inoculate children against less serious threats like chickenpox or hepatitis A.

Vaccinating our children can provide peace of mind that if our kids contract COVID, it will likely be little more than a runny nose. I’m ready for Jacob to experience the world, I just want him to have all the protection he deserves.

Becky DeCamillis is a physician assistant with Novant Health Infectious Disease Specialists in Winston-Salem.