vaccines

[blueforyou]

my daughter is 24 weeks pregnant and is soon due to have her flu jab. As the baby is due in Jan the midwife advised she get this jab. I don't recall having any jabs apart from the anti d than I needed due to my rhesus blood type. I am not a scare mongerer at all but It does worry me that whatever they are planning to put into my daughter will go into the baby. My daughter is quite young (19) and tends to think these people know what they are talking about. So I have joined MN to seek a bit of advice. Cheers.

Had whooping cough jab with both and flu jab with 2nd - 1st was summer baby and therefore wasn't in the system in flu jab season. 2nd was a no brainer as I could barely breathe from anaemia and baby wedging his head in my diaphragm so flu would have been very bad news!

I know someone who nearly lost her baby because she got flu late in pregnancy. The point really is for the jabs to go into baby. It gives them immunity through mum and her antibodies. That's particularly important for babies born in winter. Under 5s are significant risk group for death from flu (but under 2s can't get the flu jab/spray themselves), so it's a wonderful way to protect your baby. Same with whooping cough (if you've ever seen a child with whooping cough, it's absolutely heartbreaking how ill they can become and it lasts for months).

I've had the flu jab and whooping cough in both of my pregnancies, and I get the flu jab every year anyway (getting mine tomorrow, actually). The reality is that how clinical research is done now is very different from the days of Thalidomide. I work in clinical research. Things were done in a pretty haphazard way back then. But the rules are very strict now and these vaccines are tested on pregnant women. People will say they aren't, but they absolutely are. We can't do it in drug development/safety testing phases, but there have been many years of community trials of the use of both the flu and tdap vaccines in pregnancy, which have shown no unusual adverse effects in mum or baby.

but I am old enough to remember the dreadful thalidimide drug that was given to pregnant women in the 60's for extreme morning sickness

Presumably also old enough to know there is a difference between a new drug which hadn’t followed the rigorous testing we demand now, and which was withdrawn almost immediately, and a flu vaccine which has been given to millions of people over the years and has shown no issues whatsoever.

I've had the flu jab in both my pregnancies with no ill effects. Not only to keep me fit and well through pregnancy, but because the thought of getting the flu a few weeks after giving birth would be an utter nightmare. You're already tired and your body is recovering from quite a big ordeal, the last thing you need is the flu too.