Cole Edison bounces around a room at Doctors Hospital, punching buttons on a bed, dragging out a cord, hopping into a rocking chair. The 22-month-old Hephzibah boy shows no signs of the whooping cough that nearly ended his life.

For that his mother, Melissa, is grateful because he got it from her. To stop that kind of transmission, Doctors Hospital has begun routinely giving new mothers a vaccine to protect against the disease, also called pertussis, that can be mild in adults but deadly to babies. The babies can't receive the vaccine until they are at least 2 months old, said pediatrician Reginald Pilcher, who is the president of the medical staff at Doctors.

"So the baby is basically uncovered until 2 months; basically has no coverage against whooping cough until they get the first shot at 2 months of age," he said.

Whooping cough was a much larger problem in the 1930s, before a vaccine was developed. From that time until the late 1970s, whooping cough cases declined from more than 200,000 to fewer than 10,000. They climbed again in 1980 and reached about 25,000 in 2005, when 39 children died of the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Doctors in recent years started to suspect that adolescents and young adults might need a booster shot to strengthen immunity to the disease, Dr. Pilcher said. The problem is the bacteria that causes it is still around.

"It's one of these things that's sitting out there, waiting and biding its time," Dr. Pilcher said.

Cole had just been born when Mrs. Edison came down with what she thought was a cold.

"When I went to my primary care physician, he diagnosed me with asthma," she said. Then Cole started coughing.

"I just thought it was a cough," Mrs. Edison said. "But when he got it really bad, his lips would turn blue."

The disease causes mucus to clog the airways and makes it hard to expel or breathe.

Mrs. Edison took Cole to Dr. Pilcher, who admitted him to Doctors. He was later transferred to Medical College of Georgia Children's Medical Center, where he was on a ventilator for two weeks, Dr. Pilcher said.

Though she didn't get the shot herself, "I would tell other people" to do it, she said.