Angry grandma roasts modern moms over strict baby visitor vaccination demands but health experts say shes wrong

A riled-up grandma is calling out what she considers to be extreme measures taken by today’s overprotective parents — sparking a massive online melee.Randi Crawford, who happens to be a parenting coach, started the debate by announcing that she was finding herself baffled by the “mind-boggling” boundaries enforced by modern moms and dads.“The amount of rules going into the new parent playbook is very mind-boggling to Gen Xers like myself.Who is telling these young parents that grandma needs so much clearance to be near the baby?” she questioned in a recent video.

Crawford maintains that several of her friends, all of whom were thrilled to become grandmothers, have been subjected to a rigorous protocol for meeting new family members.“There are all these things that have to happen before that grandma is allowed to be near that baby,” she railed, listing TDAP and flu shots as well as multi-day quarantining and a clothing change after travel as prerequisites for visitation.

Frustrating as these measures seem to Crawford, health care professionals actually do advise parents to err on the side of vaccination before visitation.“Since newborns’ immune systems are still developing, they can’t receive most vaccines until they’re several months old,” said Jonathan Grein, MD, director of Hospital Epidemiology and infection control officer at Cedars-Sinai.“That means parents, grandparents and close caregivers become the first line of defense against serious illnesses.”The TDAP vaccination, which protects against whooping cough, a potentially fatal illness in infants, requires a booster every 10 years.

Meanwhile, infants six months and under are vulnerable to serious complications from the flu, making the flu vaccine a recommended protocol for visiting grandparents.Crawford’s tirade extended beyond vaccination requests, however.“When you finally make it to your next checkpoint, you have to call the family and make sure that mom and baby are...