Mia, now nearly five months old, is happy and healthy and back at home with Kate and her director husband Jim Threapleton. Friends of the actress said that she had been 'distraught' with worry about the baby, her first, when she was told in January that what had appeared to be a cold was in fact something far more serious. It starts in the same way as a cold with a runny nose, weeping eyes and a cough. Later, the patient is racked by coughing fits which have a distinctive 'whooping' sound, and vomiting.
Convalescence takes a month or two.
Because the disease can be fatal, most children are immunised against it from the age of two months, and it is now rare. Mia caught whooping cough despite having the immunisation. It's the most amazing thing. Kate has taken time off since Mia was born but next month she starts work on her next film, which is being shot at Shepperton, close to her home in the Home Counties. The film, an adaptation of Zola's novel Therese Raquin, is a story of illicit passion, murder and guilt.