Are your children’s vaccines up to date?

Set a reminder

Please or to access all these features

Pregnancy

Talk about every stage of pregnancy, from early symptoms to preparing for birth.

5 weeks pregnant - should I have my 2nd AstraZenica Jab??

80 replies

Hopefull26 · 17/05/2021 11:40

Hey everyone. I'm in two minds about having my second AstraZenica vaccine this week, im aged 29 and this is my second pregnancy. I had gestational diabetes last time so I am classed as a higher risk.

I had my first jab back in March before I got pregnant and now I'm so worried of something happening to the baby as a result of having my second vaccine!

Called the gp and they said it's up to me! So not helpful

Just wondered what you would do if you were me? Or if anyone has been in the same situation and had their vaccine x

OP posts:
Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
Zulu933 · 15/08/2021 10:57

@AlbiMix that’s great news about scan. Sorry for your prior loss.

Onwards and upwards for you from now 😀

Zulu933 · 15/08/2021 11:04

Just update from me. At 21 weeks, I bit the bullet and went for second AZ jab yesterday! Am now 24 hours later and no side effects other than bit of sore arm. Feeling relieved. On my first jab I had fever and felt like I was run over by a bus. Amazing no side effects this time. Glad I did it. 😀

AlbiMix · 16/08/2021 13:43

Great news @Zulu933! Most people I've spoken to had side effects after dose 1 and nothing after dose 2. Feels better to be double vaccinated doesn't it :)

LJ23 · 16/08/2021 16:48

Update from me - decided to get second jab yesterday, I’m just over 15 weeks.
Interestingly I had two clincians refuse to give it to me due to their concerns re lack of data. But I have done my research and shared info I had received from an Immunologist I had reached out to (as I was getting nowhere with GP and midwives) and it convinced the second clinician to give it to me. In case it is useful to anyone else, please see the Immunologists email below;

“It's worth saying that in terms of getting vaccinated under our national programme, you would have to get AstraZeneca as your second dose. However, it is possible to get Pfizer as a second dose if a doctor writes you what is called a "patient specific directive" (basically a prescription), which allows you to get a vaccine that is not recommended by the national schedule. The doctor would, of course, have to be convinced that it is important for you, clinically, to get a different vaccine from usual - this is most often used when people have had a bad reaction to their first dose.

So be aware that that is an option, but if I were in your position I would prefer to have my second dose of AZ as per the national schedule, and my main reason for this is that we know lots about what happens with two doses of AZ, but much less about what happens with AZ followed by Pfizer. So I personally would prefer to go with the option about which there is more information available.

I should also say that I do think it's worthwhile getting a second dose of something, whichever you choose, since once dose is not as protective against the delta variant as we would like, whereas two work very well.

In terms of specific information about AZ in pregnancy, the reason we started recommending Pfizer/Moderna rather than AZ in pregnancy is because the biggest safety in pregnancy datasets come from the USA and Israel, which are using those vaccines. However, there is pregnancy safety data on AZ from the UK and Canada, and this has given us no reason to think AZ is unsafe - it's just that we have more data on the mRNA vaccines in pregnancy because the USA and Israel led the way in that, so we feel more confident about them.

It's also worth knowing that AZ has been designed not to leave the site of injection, and all the animal data we have bears this out, so we do not worry about it crossing the placenta. Because of this, we have been happy to use vaccines similar to AZ in pregnant people in the past, to prevent Ebola.

Finally, you may be worried about the rare clotting side effect associated with AZ. The first thing to say is that it is rare, and rarer still on the second dose. The second is that, even though clotting is more common in pregnancy, pregnancy-associated clotting actually occurs via a different mechanism to the rare side effect, so being pregnant does not put you at higher risk of it. Finally, now that we know about this, we are actually very good at treating it.”

Zulu933 · 16/08/2021 17:05

@AlbiMix ah yes definitely - am glad I did it Smile
@LJ23 great you got it done. And that’s really useful info thanks for sharing 👍🏻

New posts on this thread. Refresh page
Swipe left for the next trending thread