For Shawn Johnson East, Getting Her Infant the RSV Shot Just Made Sense
Shawn Johnson East started stressing as soon as she found out when her third child was due: smack-dab in the middle of December 2023. “Great,” she remembers thinking. “Right in the middle of illness season.”
Even the most run-of-the-mill cold virus can be scary when it comes to your little one, but Johnson East was extra concerned about one virus in particular. Both her older children, Drew, now 5, and Jett, now 3, got sick with RSV when they were younger. And while Drew “handled it pretty well,” Johnson East tells SheKnows, Jett was another story. Just six months old at the time, Jett’s RSV started out as a cough — something “every toddler mom deals with,” Johnson East said. “So I didn’t think too much of it until he woke up in the middle of the night, and he couldn’t breathe.”
Nothing Johnson East did seemed to help, and as Jett’s symptoms got worse, she and her husband, former NFL player Andrew East, decided to take him to the hospital. There, doctors gave him oxygen and confirmed the toddler had RSV. Though Johnson East felt reassured that Jett was in capable hands, “it was very scary,” she recalls. “No mother wants to take their baby to the hospital, especially at 6 months old.”
It was also a wake-up call. “Being a new mom and toddler mom, you go through viruses all the time,” the Olympic gold medalist says. “And this was one where it it took a turn, and I was like, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize how bad it could be.'”
RSV, which stands for respiratory syncytial virus, is a respiratory illness that causes cold-like symptoms. For many of us, it’s indistinguishable from and no more intense than a regular cold. But for older adults and children under age 2, it can get severe, leading to pneumonia and bronchiolitis (inflammation of the bronchioles, the smallest airways in the lungs).
“The virus just causes so much inflammation and mucus production, and that builds up in those little airways and causes difficulty breathing in young children,” board-certified pediatrician Dr. Mona Amin tells SheKnows. It can lead to the kind of labored breathing that prompts parents like the Easts to take their child to the hospital. And while severe RSV is relatively rare, it’s still “the leading cause of hospitalization for babies under one,” Dr. Amin says. “Babies are actually more than are 16 times more likely to be hospitalized with RSV than the flu, and so it is something that we want to have on our radar.”
Johnson East’s experience with Jett, along with that December due date for her third child, Bear, motivated her to learn about the options that would keep her littlest one safe through the heart of cold, flu, and family-gathering season. Her pediatrician shared information about the preventative RSV shot, Beyfortus, and the Easts ultimately decided it was the right choice to keep Bear healthy.
“We live in a world of so many different options, and parents can kind of get bombarded with all these different things,” Johnson East says. “We talked to a lot of different people, specific to Bear and specific to our situation… and overwhelmingly for our situation, it just kept coming up that it was highly recommended. It gave me a lot of confidence as a mom.”
Beyfortus was just approved last year for infants younger than 8 months of age during or before their first RSV season. (Children with some pre-existing respiratory conditions may also be eligible until age 2.) As a preventative monoclonal antibody, Beyfortus (also known as nirsevimab) directly provides the body with the antibodies it needs to fight RSV. That’s what makes it different from a vaccine, which prompts your body to create its own antibodies.
This approach means Beyfortus “works a little bit quicker” than a vaccine does, Dr. Amin says, and is the better option for babies whose immune systems may not be strong enough to create the antibodies on their own. Beyfortus, Dr. Amin notes, is not going to prevent children from getting RSV — it’s going to prevent severe illness, like the scary cases of pneumonia and bronchiolitis.
Johnson East took Bear in for his shot during his first pediatrician appointment. “He handled it very well,” she remembers. “We didn’t see any side effects with him. We were walked through the side effects of redness or irritation, hardness at the injection site, and he did really well.”
The antibody is a great tool for any parents looking to protect their child this cold and flu season, but what else can families do? Dr. Amin stresses the importance of basic hygiene, like washing your hands frequently and encouraging your little ones to do the same. Wearing a face mask can help reduce the spread of germs, she adds, and getting plenty of sleep is also crucial — for parents and kids. “Whenever my children are sick, even if I’m not sick, I make sure to go to bed early because I’m trying to protect my immune system,” Dr. Amin explains.
For Johnson East, it comes down to doing your best to take care of your little ones. “You can’t really keep it all away,” she admits. “We have a 5 year old, a 3 year old, and now a 10 month old, so it gets really difficult unless you want to stay at home forever!” In addition to stressing hygiene with her kids, Johnson East also tries to limit sugar when possible (not always easy around Halloween and the holiday season!) and make sure her kiddos sleep well.
Just a few weeks after Bear was born, Johnson East and her husband hosted a number of loved ones for Christmas, including 11 (!) kids under the age of 6. The Olympian remembers “freaking out” about the possibility of Bear picking up a virus, so knowing her newborn had an extra layer of protection “made me feel better,” she remembers. “I felt like he was more equipped to handle the season we were in.”
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