Quick poll - Pg ladies, how pg are you and will you be having the swine flu jab?

[laurawantsababy]

I am 25 weeks pg with dc2 and very confused.

After another death but with conflicting advice about the jab chosen for the UK what are we to do??

I would love you here everyones choice and thoughts on it to help me out.

Thanks

Interesting article on BBC website.

Does anyone know why pregnant women did not get vaccinated in mass the previous years against "normal" flu if the risks in pregnancy are so great? or is there a specific difference with swine flu? Also what were the mortality rate of pregnant women with "normal" flu?... Just to get some comparison with the information given here and in the media about the risks we would be taking if we were not to be vaccinated.

FWIW my SD was listening to a radio interview with a microbiologist who was asked about the mercury adjuvant. Apparently it is in very small amounts and is excreted in 24 hours or so. The risks from the vaccine are hugely less than the effects of the virus apparently.

I'm not sure what I make of this, but it is food for thought (although as a biology teacher I know that mercury is not easily extreted? Might depend on what metabolised form it's in).

I'm 37/38 weeks and very undecided. I'd be even more so if my foetus was less well-developed.

thanks dd

The main concern is that they dont know what could happen when pg women are vaccinated as it hasnt been tested. There is no evidence that it will be safe for our unborn babies although I dont think they are vaccinating in the first trimester.

Im still going to have it as swine flu cases have doubled in the last week. Just hope I can avoid getting it before the vaccine.

Yes. Celvapan= no adjuvant.

Thanks.

In the New Scientist linked above, it says that it is the first time a vaccine is made the way Celvapan is, and that no data is available re: its safety record. Arrghh!

I spoke to a friend last night who is a head nurse in a private hospital and she said If she was me do not touch any of the vaccines with a barge pole as they have not been tested for years . She is not getting it done.
She also said something very interesting, she said media and health department are making out pregnanacy is abnormal but pregnancy is the normal thing for women its abnormal for a woman not to be pregnant, thats 1 of the reason preg women glow or bloom. She said most women are healthier when they are pregnant than not. I told her I take multivitamins throughout my whole pregnancy and she said I'm really helping me and baby and that by taking them you higher your immune system.

Also she said there is a bad cold virus going about that ppl are being told is sf when it prob isn't. The gp should swab ppl.

So bearing all this in mind I will prob not be having it but will still speak to midwife today.
xx

I did the maths re pregnant women in the UK, and found it tied up with risks that I have seen doctors talking about on BBC news.

120-ish people have died of swine flu in the UK.

8 of them so far have been pregnant women.

At any one time about 3% of women are pregnant. That is 1.5 in every 100 people (as half of people are men).

So in a sample of 120 people you would expect approx 2 to be pregnant women.

Yet 8 of a sample of 120 deaths were pg women.

This means a pg woman if four times as likely to die if they get swine flu as a normal person.

I think! (feel free to challenge my stats)

Also, I understand the difference from normal flu is that normal flu generally kills people who are very old, weak or susceptible to pneumonia, and that generally doesn't include pregnant women so much as they tend to be young and relatively healthy.

I appreciate that this is now a very long thread but new people may find that answers to their questions have been posted already if they have the time to scan through it all instead of leaping on board with questions, without reading.

MummyToucan there is some great info further back about the adjuvant in Pandemrix, from trustworthy sources and also links to the WHO advice which is to vaccinate with a non-adjuvanated vaccine where available but to use the adjuvanted vaccine otherwise, as there are no known safety issues with it and they judge the risk from disease infection to be more serious than any risks from either vaccine.

hobnob57 it is a different type of mercury compared to the kind we ingest through our food, this has also been covered earlier in the thread. We get methylmercury through food and ethlymercury is used in vaccines. Ethlymercury is flushed out by the body much more quickly and effectively than methylmercury. The amount of mercury contained in Pandemrix is 2.5 micrograms which is the weekly reference dose for a person weighing 25kg (just over 4 stone). So less than half the amount that is considered by the US's FDA to be safe for an adult woman to consume eeven if she had that dose weekly over a lifetime.

upsydaisy83 your nurse friend says "its abnormal for a woman not to be pregnant"? Er, right.
Actually most women spend the majority of their adult lives not pregnant even if they have 14 children. I think I understand the point she is trying to make, about pregnancy being perfectly healthy. But swine flu is not perfectly healthy for pregnant women, it has the potential to be considerably more serious than a "bad cold".

MadameDuBain your maths matches more or less with the USA stats which is that 6% of the reported deaths from swine flu in that country from May-August were pregnant women, while pregnant women account for only approximately 1% of the population. It proves what the WHO and others have said, which is that otherwise healthy pregnant women are more likely to develop serious complications as a result of swine flu than the average healthy adult.

i'm a bit sceptical about the author of the new scientist article - you can search for other articles she's written and many of them are heavily weighted towards promoting fear, and dare i say it, panic regarding flu viruses.

In another article, available on the NS website, she quotes a statistic which states that babies whose mothers have ordinary flu whilst pregnant are 7 times more likely to develop schizophrenia in later life. and again . You really do have to wonder how anyone could arrive at a statistic like that with a straight face.

Firstly, flu is sometimes very hard to distinguish from cold viruses, there's no routine swabbing for seasonal flu and so it would be very hard to determine retrospectively whether those mothers had indeed contracted flu or not during pregnancy.

And then of there's all the women in the study who may have had flu and not been aware of it during pregnancy...

I posted on here at the beginning of the thread and said that I wouldn't be having the vaccine. Now I don't know what to do. I am 20 weeks and asthmatic. I am always offered the seasonal flu jab, though I don't always take it.

I have literally been in tears (possibly hormonal based though!) over what to do about this as I live in London and commute for 45mins twice a day on packed tubes filled with people coughing and sneezing. I am really concerned that sf figures have doubled in the last week.

I am seeing my doctor on Monday to discuss asthma and also hopefully get my questions answered by the gp. What I will be asking is:

Does having the sf jab 100% protect me from catching sf? Seasonal flu jabs only protect against three types of flu virus (they guess the 3 types that they think will be most prevalent that year) so you can still catch a different flu virus despite the vaccine. As the sf jab is made specifically to protect against sf, then it should be 100% effective surely?

Can I have celvapan rather than Pandemrix? If not, why not and where can I get it/who can I argue my case too?

If I must have Pandemrix which contains mercury, are they advising pg women not to consume fish for the period of time that the injection will take to filter through the body. Current gov't recommendations are to have only 2 portions of fish a week while pg because of the high levels of mercury in it. Therefore, if I eat two portions of mercury containing fish (i.e. tuna and salmon) and then have the Pandemrix jab - while I have consumed too much mercury?

Why is the company making the vaccine (GSK) been given immunity by the gov't that if the there are any repurcussions to mother/baby due to the vaccine they will not be held accountable? if the gov't is so confident that the vaccine is safe then surely this is unnecessary.

I fear that my GP will probably not know the answers to these questions and therefore I will end up even more undecided.

If anyone has the answers to the above then it would be greatly appreciated. It is a shame that there is not a number/contact for all of us pg women where we can go and get advice/reassurance about this. I think the general gov't whitewash of "just take the vaccine and don't ask questions" doesn't help matters.

I went to a routine mw appt yesterday, and was told that she "knew nothing about Celvapan", and I should book an appointment with the practice manager. She also told me that the GPs were receiving £40 per jab administered.

I went to the receptionist, where the conversation went like this:

PJ: Can you let me know if you have received delivery of your swine flu vaccines, and if so, what vaccine it is?
R: Erm, we haven't received anything, nor have we as a practice been advised about it. I only know what I've seen on the news.
PJ: Oh, right, OK then.
R: Hang on, you won't be eligible for it anyway, because you're pregnant.
PJ: Erm, I think you'll find we're first in the queue.
R: Really? God, I'd stay well away from it if I were you.

P.S. Sorry if I have repeated questions already asked - I have been following this thread but my memory is pretty shocking at the moment

Very good point made about the legal immunity given to GSK and others. Why? If it is safe, what are they afraid of? If it is not and there is a risk then why not tell us so that the risks can be evaluated depending on our own individual situations?

I am just so torn on what decision to make re this vaccine. I am 25 weeks pregnant and honestly just so stressed about it all.
Up until last week i was dead against getting it but really struggling with my decision now.

If i decide to get it, is it Celvapan i should be asking for, is that the majority verdict?

Thanks to everyone for posting all the info and links etc, about the only place i have actually been able to find some decent info.

Love to see the discussion growing and look forward to seeing the petition mentioned earlier. There SHOULD be a choice here as pregnant women have in Germany and the US and there SHOULD be more information available to us right now. Telling us the vac is coming out without word on which one and when is not at all helpful. My surgery us clueless here and is saying 2-3 weeks but it seems like they know about the same as we do.

I am also asthmatic and feel it's important to get the adjuvant-free vac for my health and my baby's. If that's not offered I'm really not sure what to do.

On the mercury in fish versus mercury in vac keep in mind an important difference- food goes into your gut where it is digested in a distinctive way versus the vac that goes into your and your baby's bloodstream and could theoretically have a much more direct impact.

Given that sf cases doubled last week I think pg women really need to view this seriously.

My dd has a mild form of swine flu.... we are treating her with alternate doses of calpol and nurofen and she is recovering well!!!! My doctor said that Tamiflu was making people iller .... sick, runs, hallucinationg etc???!!!! She also said that in a personal not not a professional one.... she WOULDNT have the VACCINE as there is no research into its effects.....long or short term! She believes traditional methods of treating flu are better and if any concerns about baby i was told if i had it i would be seen ...... they would just be masked, gloved and wearing white protection suits...... sounds mad but at least would be seen!!!!

"£40 per jab administered."

ah, I'm afraid you have been told what we in the medical profession call a 'lie'

it's £5.25 to cover the cost of the vaccine, the practice administrators' time working out who is elegible and who isn't and the priority (when the government finally gives us a list) receptionists time contacting and organising the appointments for the thousands of our patients that are expected to be eligible, the doctors and nurses time giving the vaccines, (trying our best)to deal with queries when limited information is available and the cost of heating/lighting etc for the extra surgeries at weekends we will certainly have to run to stand a hope in hell of getting everyone who wants and is eligible for it covered.

Most practices are expecting to make a loss and partners (thankfully I'm not one) will have to be doing overtime (unpaid of course) just to keep up with the normal workload.

if you want to compare - asda locally is offering the seasonal flu jab for £8, boots £12.99.

I am 16+5 and won't be having the jab as I am already on baby aspirin to try and make my immune system behave and it seems daft to get my immune system all excited, to the point of going - "what the heck's that in there, we'd better deal with it and get rid of it" on the off chance I could get piggy flu.

Maybe if consultant says otherwise I might change my mind, but my naughty immune system need to be kept down at the mo.

Good luck ladies with your decisions. May they be informed ones.

Right.

I have just come back from my local surgery, here in North Kent.

The gp didn't even know there are 2 sorts of vaccines, one with adjuvant the other without. He said he didn't know which kind they would be receiving, and said I would be offered the one they have and that's it, it'll be down to me to take it or not. I asked "won't there be any alternative for egg allergy sufferers then?", he said "err...I don't know".

He added that they won't be receiving the vaccine for another 2-3 weeks, as they have just put their figures in of how many doses they would need. They will receive 500 to start with, he said he was sure that wouldn't be enough for this area, but "we'll see".

I'm far from impressed.

Today in Norway the Department of Health has gone out with a recommendation that the entire population be vaccinated, when the priority high-risk groups have been offered the vaccine if they want it.

A two year old boy died yesterday of swine flu. He had an underlying illness but was not ill for very long, according to the Chief Medical Officer (Bjørn Iversen).

The department has also said they want kids aged 6 months and up to be vaccinated whereas to date they have said from 3 years and up. The CMO is quoted as saying the vaccine is approved for use in children from 6 months and that all the available testing data suggests it is both safe and effective.

My GP surgery has no idea when they are even getting the vaccines delivered so couldn't give me a date but on there is a vaccination drop-in clinic elsewhere next Wednesday so I am planning to get it (Pandemrix) then if I can.

Sorry I haven't read through all 17 pages, but does anyone know what happens is you are due now?

I think it's next week we start being offered the vaccine, but I'm due next Friday and don't know if I should try to get the vaccine post-natally - then no risk to the pregnancy, but is there any benefit to either me, or a breast-fed baby? Perhaps they'll just send me home if I've delivered and turn up for a vaccine but wondered if there is any discussion on this?