While vaccines have made gatherings much safer this year, there are still a lot of complicated unknowns. CharlotteCowles spoke with pediatric health experts about how to travel with small children during the holidays
Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photo: Getty Images I found out I was pregnant right before Thanksgiving last year. The subsequent months were a haze of exhaustion, nausea, pizza delivery, loneliness, and COVID paranoia. The largest group of people I hung out with consisted of my husband and my parents at Christmas. I celebrated New Year’s Eve by eating a ham-and-cheese sandwich alone in our dark, silent kitchen.
While vaccines have made gatherings much safer this season, there are still a lot of complicated unknowns.
Should I get rapid tests? “If you’re traveling, I think that rapid testing is a good idea,” says Emily Oster, an economist and author of the ParentData book series and newsletter, which offer data-driven advice for decision-making in pregnancy and parenting. “Even if everyone in your group is vaccinated, rapid testing before and after you arrive adds an extra layer of safety.”
Can relatives hold my baby? When I asked our pediatrician what we could do to keep our baby healthy in a crowd of loving relatives, she suggested that we ask everyone to wear a mask while holding him. She also told us to throw her under the bus if we needed a scapegoat: “Feel free to say your pediatrician told you to do it.”
To be honest, I’m still on the fence about whether I’ll ask every vaccinated relative to wear a mask to hold our baby for the full week of Thanksgiving. Instead, I might opt for a hybrid model — ask everyone to mask for the first few days after they arrive and test negative for COVID, and then relax the rules when it’s clear that no one is sick.
How do I know if I’m making a safe decision? “It’s important to understand your own risk tolerance, and communicate it,” says Dr. Prasad. But that’s easier said than done — and what is “risk tolerance,” anyway?
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