Whether choosing a vacation abroad or going on a business trip, for some people, flying is a frequent occurrence. Reddit userKthrowaway244‘s parents live overseas so she also isn’t a newbie to the experience.
The new grandparents were very unhappy to hear this. They started accusing their daughter of being disrespectful and turned against her. She started having doubts about her decision and made aposton the subreddit ‘Am I the [Jerk]?‘ asking the community to help her make sense of the whole ordeal.
This woman has just given birth to her first child, and her parents really want to meet their grandson
Image credits:westend61 (not the actual photo)
But they live overseas, and the woman doesn’t want to take a long flight with a newborn
Her parents believe the woman is being disrespectful
Image credits:Ashwin Vaswani (not the actual photo)
Image source:kthrowaway244
While it is technically OK for babies to fly just a few days after they’re born, doctors generallydiscouragethis. Air travel increases a newborn’s risk of catching an infectious disease, and babies born prematurely, with chronic heart or lung problems, or with upper or lower respiratory symptoms may also have problems with the change in oxygen level within the air cabin.
But “Around 3 to 6 months can be a good time to fly,” Mollie Greves Grow, MD, MPH, a pediatrician at Seattle Children’s Hospital,toldVerywell Family. “This is after they have started or completed the primary immunization series and after the worst of fussiness/colic has passed, which usually peaks around six weeks.”
The vaccines, however, aren’t the end-all-be-all for why babies should fly after a certain age. “As a general rule, I advise against air travel under 2 months of age unless it is absolutely necessary,” pediatrician Gary Kramer, MD, PA, told the same outlet. “The reason has nothing to do with the first vaccines but rather with the consequence that any infant below that age developing a fever will require a complete emergency evaluation for infection.”
This is especially concerning while flying because there are many people packed into a small, contained space. While airplane air is very clean—Boeing compares the air in its airplanes to hospital air—that doesn’t account for the other parts of airplane travel, like hired cars, public transportation, and the airport itself, where babies can pick up germs that could make them sick.
As her post went viral, the woman provided more information in its comment section
After reading her story, the overwhelming majority of people thought she did nothing wrong in this situation
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