Pregnant / breastfeeding and considering vaccination?

[Newyearsameoldshite]

I'm currently breastfeeding my toddler and 8 weeks pregnant. I work in the NHS in an acute London hospital although I'm not strictly frontline - I have limited contact with patients but do spend large parts of each day in close proximity with clinical staff who treat both COVID and non-COVID patients.

I've had a number of opportunities to have a vaccine over the past couple of weeks, usually very last minute when reconstituted medication is nearing the expiry time and so slots are offered out to all staff.

I'm finding it really hard to make the decision about whether to accept the vaccine or not. Non-live vaccines are usually safe in pregnancy and so it seems unlikely that the COVID vaccine would harm the baby, but without any data or evidence there's always the potential that it could. I'm not facing COVID patients on a daily basis so my risk isn't super high, but I'm working in a hospital surrounded by people who are, in one of the parts of the country with the highest incidence of cases.

I read a really great thread on Twitter by a foetal medicine specialist who is also pregnant which makes some good points, but I wanted to ask the good people of Mumsnet if any of you have gone ahead and taken the plunge while pregnant? What was your reasoning? Are you also finding it hard to decide?

twitter.com/jackie_parchem

I'm definitely getting it and I'm breastfeeding a toddler, albeit only 1-2 times a day. There is no biological process which I can feasibly think of that suggests a vaccine can somehow damage breastmilk which could get passed onto your child which could potentially cause damage. All the mRNA vaccine does is teach your body to produce a spike protein that's similar to the covid spike protein and then your immune system makes antibodies against it. All traces of the vaccine disappear after week and you're left with the antibodies.

Just like if you catch a cold while breastfeeding you also end up with antibodies. And if those can be passed through breastmilk then all the better for passive immunity. Covid antibodies are produced by your own body so they're 100% natural.

I strongly feel that the risks of me not getting vaccinated and potentially getting ill and passing THAT to my daughter is far far worse. She is too young to be vaccinated herself so it's almost like the MMR situation. She's reliant on society to keep her safe and the person she has most contact with is myself and DH. I couldn't forgive myself if I got her sick since covid is an extremely complex virus with absolute no research on long term effects. It's closely linked to autoimmune disorders, possibly triggering diabetes, lupus or kawasakis. The Epstein Barr Virus (mono) has also been linked to an increased chance of cancer or lupus and it took decades of research to discover that.

Even though babies & children get off easy with initial infections, there's no proof that covid won't trigger something years down the line. The Kawasaki-like illness caused by covid in children only appears 6 weeks after infection and I'm not sure if they even found out exactly why that happens (disappeared from the news recently).

So long story short, the hypothetical risks of a vaccine that has been proven almost 100% safe (aside from the baseline risks of all vaccines) far outweighs a horrific new virus that has wiped out swathes of human lives in an era of wealth and technology that should technically make humankind invincible.

@IceIceLazy you make such good points and so clearly. I don't think I'd even considered the potential immunity that I could pass on to my daughter as well as the new baby. We are so strongly encouraged to have the flu and the whooping cough vaccine I can't see why a slightly different non-live vaccine would be different.

Another question because your advice was so spot on - do you think there's benefit in waiting until after the first trimester when most of the important organ growth has happened?

I'm 18 weeks now and had the vaccine today. Except for a sore arm I'm feeling well so far. I'm not "front line" and currently have no contact with COVID patients.

It was a personal benefit vs risk assessment for me where I felt contracting COVID would be more detrimental while pregnant than the vaccine itself.

The vaccination team also asked for a letter from a clinician involved in my care, which my obstetrician provided.

@Newyearsameoldshite
Glad it helped :)!! I'm not a doctor so I don't want to give advice regarding conception or pregnancy, however that for me is a very different situation to breastfeeding. I'm absolutely pro-vaccine but I think I would have avoided it during the first trimester of my own pregnancy for psychological reasons. It's the same reason why massage therapists generally don't treat 1st trimester women. Since a small percentage of pregnancies always end in miscarriage, any significant external event may be attributed as the cause. Massages have not been proven to be harmful in pregnancy but due to liability reasons they aren't usually offered.

If I ended up with a mc or the baby had health problems I'd forever worry about whether the vaccine (and this doesn't have to be covid..I would not get a flu vaccine or any other shots unless absolutely necessary) had something to do with it. I had a missed miscarriage many years ago and a tiny thing that always niggled in my mind was going on a long hike before I knew I was pregnant and getting quite dehydrated because we didn't bring enough water. I had random spotting that day but put it down to my period. It seems trivial in retrospect but it's something I'll never know for sure.

Where I live now, pregnant women aren't advised to get the vaccine however close contact people of pregnant women are given the same priority ranking as high-risk groups. I think it's a good way of passively protecting those pregnant or TTC.

Can I just say as someone who had 3 MCs, including 2 MMCs towards the end of the first trimester, it's never our fault. Miscarriage is an event outside of our control as mothers. However, I understand that some of us may have a "what if" feeling afterwards if a pregnancy goes wrong and you get the vaccine and only for that reason I'd hold off till the second trimester.

No offer to work from home. Just pulled off patient facing into the base office to do admin/ rotas/ care plans etc.
Manager is now shielding and working from home again due to underlying condition. I asked if this meant that as I will also be in the high risk category I should be at home also and she said no, because she’s extremely clinically vulnerable, and I’m ‘just vulnerable’.
As far as I know my team are all getting vaccinated so that offers me a certain level of protection I suppose.