Another one should've gotten vaccinated, Part I.

[a322x1n]

<https://www.mayoclinic.org/should-pregnant-women-be-vaccinated-for-covid
-19/vid-20511503>

<https://tinyurl.com/nwfmkaft>

Melanie Swift, M.D., COVID-19 Vaccine Allocation and Distribution, Mayo
Clinic: Pregnant women should be offered the vaccine, and that is not
just my opinion, that's the opinion of the American College of
Gynecology and that's the opinion of the Society for Maternal-Fetal
Medicine. These are experts and taking care of pregnant mothers, and
they believe that women should be offered these vaccines. They really
want to protect pregnant women from having severe outcomes from COVID.

Pregnant women are at increased risk for bad outcomes when they get
COVID and even if they're healthy, the pregnancy itself makes them
susceptible to some of the complications of COVID. So pregnant women are
more likely to have severe COVID and more likely to be hospitalized, and
any severe illness in pregnancy increases the risk to the outcome of the
pregnancy.

Now we have registries of women who did choose to take the vaccine,
because theoretically there's no reason it would be harmful for them to
do so. We have some data that shows they haven't had any increased risk
of bad outcomes from their pregnancies. Their babies have been just as
healthy as their counterparts who weren't vaccinated. But looking at the
transfer of immunity to their babies, there are some early signs from
studies that have been conducted that are small, that show those
antibodies do get transferred across the placenta to the baby. So Pfizer
is enrolling about 4,000 women in a large study looking at the immunity
that babies get when they're too young to be vaccinated. They could
still get enough benefit from their mother being vaccinated to protect
them from COVID in infancy. So it's still a question that's being
answered. There are some very promising, early results.

There's absolutely no sign that it's any concern for breastfeeding
mothers to take the vaccine. Perfectly safe for you to breastfeed after
you've been vaccinated. Antibodies are detected in breast milk. Now,
what we don't know is how well those antibodies get absorbed by the
baby, and if they end up being protective or not. There's two ways that
the baby could be getting antibodies from their mom. They could get it
through the bloodstream, which we think is probably a pretty efficient
way to immunize the baby, or they could get it through breast milk.

Pregnant women are sometimes confused by all of this understandably, and
I would encourage them to talk with their ob/gyn, talk with their
primary care provider who's taking care of them in their pregnancy and
can advise them about the pros and cons of being vaccinated, and
generally they're going to find reassurance there.