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Pregnant and scared of the COVID vaccine

I'm 16 weeks pregnant, and am so scared of the vaccine for covid19. I keep hearing that it might cause me to miscarry - is that true? Will it harm my baby in any way? If it could, how exactly could it?

On the other hand, will it protect my baby? I know my baby will get my antibodies through the placenta, but are these antibodies included in that?

Thanks for your help.

Best Answer
3191940 tn?1447268717
This is a great question!  First, I'll address the misinformation that most of us have been seeing on social media sites - the vaccine does NOT increase the risk of miscarriage.  Here's a good article to get you started on that: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/mrna-vaccines-not-linked-miscarriage-covid-19-shots-us-still-protect-against-2021-09-13/  They cite a study that included over 105,000 pregnant women, so that's a pretty robust study, and you can trust the statistics.  There are no reports indicating that the vaccine causes harm to the developing fetus.

There is some early evidence that antibodies against COVID are passed on to the baby: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/03/study-shows-covid-19-vaccinated-mothers-pass-antibodies-to-newborns/  Keep in mind that most women of child-bearing age were not eligible for the vaccine until around May of this year, and the vaccine was only recommended for those already pregnant beginning a few months ago.  So, there aren't a ton of babies who have been born to vaccinated mothers yet.  The evidence is promising, and even if the antibodies don't fully transfer to the baby, at least you won't likely get COVID yourself, and potentially pass it on to your newborn.

The best reason of all to get vaccinated during pregnancy is that having a COVID infection while pregnant DOES increase the risk to your developing baby - emerging evidence shows that the risk of pre-term birth or pregnancy loss is much higher in those who are pregnant and infected with COVID: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/special-populations/pregnancy-data-on-covid-19/what-cdc-is-doing.html

This one about maternal outcomes while giving birth, infected with COVID is pretty scary: https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-08-11/women-giving-birth-with-covid-19-face-higher-risk-of-death - and I'm not posting it to scare you, but hopefully just to let you know that having a COVID vaccine is way, way safer for you and your baby than risking getting COVID.

Make sure you talk to your doctor about your concerns.  Only your doctor can assess your personal health status and determine the best time for you to get vaccinated, but in general, the evidence is pretty clear that it's a good idea for pregnant women.

Good luck with your pregnancy!

4 Comments
Agree, best you check with your doc, but a there were a fair number of women in the early vaccine trials who were not known at the time to be pregnant and they appear to have done fine.  Your problem is, as stated above, pregnant women don't do fine if they get covid -- it's one of the risk factors for getting a bad case.  I think it's less of a case of a problem for your child than it is a problem for your child growing up without you or with a Mom with long-haul covid, but again, ask your doc.  Also, check on which type of vaccine is best.  I think the mRNA ones are safest, as a couple of the other types did have some problems, although quite rare.  So do check with your doc, and if your doc doesn't know, which is highly possible, get referred to a doc who does.  
what universe do you live in? there are many reports of misscarrying even up to time of birth...please quite playing the misinfo card ...these are lives your playing with.  
Hi chuckles - no one is saying that pregnant women who get the vaccine NEVER miscarry or have a stillbirth.  What the data show is that women who have the vaccine do not miscarry or have stillbirths any more often than women who do not have the vaccine.  I posted studies below to back up that assertion.
Just to ask, chuckles, which website did you get your info from?  Or which friend?  Or which talk show host?  There was in fact a long article in yesterday's Washington Post about pregnant women who did not get the vaccine and got covid and because of that either they died or their child died.  Folks, when someone says these days "there are many reports" but doesn't cite any of them or a good source for that, does that sound like anyone you've heard a lot from the last 5 years?  Covid is so much more dangerous than the vaccine the risks don't even belong in the same book, let alone the same sentence.
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Avatar universal
Also, there are many cases of miscarriages.   Check OpenVaers.com  It's the CDC's website that doctors are supposed to report all vaccine adverse reactions to.  They give some of the numbers. Vaers (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System)  Unfortunately a Harvard study done in 2015 found that only 1% of all reactions actually made it on to VAERS.  Which means whatever number you see, it's probably a lot higher.  FYI  Best of Luck
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2 Comments
First, it is not permitted to do studies that specifically involve pregnant women.  However, the initial trials did include women who were pregnant, who did not yet know they were pregnant.  The background rate of miscarriages in pregnancy (meaning the average number, before the COVID vaccine existed), is 11-16%.  This study: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-798175/v1 and this study: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2104983 show that the rate among women who were vaccinated against COVID is around 13% - average for the entire population.  With more than 6 billion doses of the vaccine having been administered many to pregnant women, it is now possible to say with statistical certainty that COVID vaccination has no effect on the viability of pregnancy.

OpenVaers.com is not a CDC website.  VAERS is.  OpenVAERS is not, and was developed by someone with an anti-vaccine agenda.  Even if it uses VAERS data, there are disclaimers on every page in VAERS indicating that the presence of a report does NOT mean that the vaccine caused the event being reported.  Reports entered into VAERS are not checked for validity - I could submit a report about a reaction I heard about 3rd-hand.

The "Harvard Study" referenced is NOT a Harvard University study, as the name implies.  It was a study performed in 2011 by an organization by the name of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care,  which is an insurance company.  The study cites no source for how they arrived at the 1% number.  They have been asked to validate that number, and never done so - so it appears it was pulled out of thin air.

VAERS is good as an early monitoring tool, but it's not intended to be used as evidence of anything, or for statistical analysis.  More reliable (and verified) data can be fund in the v-safe system, along with the Vaccine Data Safetylink database.  It is from these sources, coupled with similar databases worldwide, that scientists and data analysts have confirmed that the vaccine is safe for pregnant women.  Moreover, these sources have also been used to confirm the extreme risk to both mother and fetus of being infected with COVID during pregnancy.

Everyone must make their own decision in consultation with their physician, but it is important to use evidence-based information to do so rather than rely on hearsay or unvalidated reports of events that are largely unrelated to the vaccine.
I would like to second the above.  To the poster:  if you buy into conspiracy theories and believe conspiracy theory forums, you will live a life based on fiction.  You might like that, you might not, but in a pandemic it's a particularly bad place to live.  
Avatar universal
They never did any studies of the vaccine on pregnant women.  If it was me, I would not get the vaccine.
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