Starting this week we are allowing partners to accompany their pregnant partners for the 20 week anatomy ultrasound! Yay! Of course, they will be required to wear masks and if the waiting room is busy we ask partners to be respectful of the safe space we have continued to foster and wait in their car until they are called back to the room.
We are hoping to allow partners for more ultrasounds in the near future, as we see the numbers continue to drop! Please stay tuned and have patience as we try to be fair and accommodate as many families as we can.
And on to the biggest question these days...should you get the vaccine if you are pregnant?
Starting March 15 pregnancy will be included in Tier 1c so you will be allowed to make appointments for vaccinations. To be clear all of the FDA approved vaccines do not contain live virus and should be safe in pregnancy. The adenovirus vector in theJohnson and Johnson vaccine has been used in a Ebola vaccine trials with no adverse pregnancy outcomes.
Please refer to my shared decision making handout on previous posts, but basically the advice is the same. We don't have safety data, but when we look at risk of the actual COVID virus we think the risk of the vaccine is minimal. In addition to pregnant women in high risk occupations there are some people who are at higher risk of complications from COVID and I would encourage those patients to get the vaccine. These groups include patients with BMI > 35, cancer, chronic kidney disease, immunocompromised state from organ transplant, pulmonary disease, sickle cell disease, smoking, and also Hispanic, LatinX, or Black patients.
There is absolutely no reason to believe the vaccine causes an immune response in the fetus, the immune response in the mother may pass Antibodies to the fetus but that would hopefully provide some protection for the baby if the baby was exposed. I think the biggest risk in pregnancy is that if you have side effects or an allergic type reaction to the vaccine it might make you nervous about pregnancy symptoms. For example a fever, vomiting or diarrhea might make you dehydrated and make your uterus contract.
I definitely do not think you should worry if you received the vaccine while pregnant unknowingly and I don't think you should delay getting pregnant because of the vaccine. If you are in a high risk profession please don't delay getting the vaccine. If you are breast feeding and able to get the vaccine, please do!
Hopefully we will have data in pregnant women soon!
For more information :
ACOG statement https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/practice-advisory/articles/2020/12/vaccinating-pregnant-and-lactating-patients-against-covid-19
Our lovely ultrasound tech Mindy posing here!
