miscarriage & swine flu jab?

[mummyofthomas]

sorry to start yet another swine flu jab but could really do with some reassurance advice. after much deliberation and research I have booked in to have the swine flu jab tomorrow. I am midly asthmatic and 24 weeks pregnant. was doing more last minute research online and found some information that seemed to imply that the vaccine has been causing miscarriages/still births. now of course I know you can't believe everything you read but this has really frightened me. Does anyone have any experience of having this vaccine? particularly if you are in the second/third trimester.

Interesting. Where have you read this - would be v interested to read the source? Given that the SWJ is only a recent thing, it seems a little early to show a link between it and MC/stillbirth as any research would have to rule out other risk factors.

just wanted to say i had my SF vaccine last wednesday, so a week ago now. My baby has been fine, and i had a scan today at 25 weeks- everything looked fine. Not all pregnancies end happily, and normally we dont hear about them. I think because of this swine flu scare, its all being reported when normally it wouldnt be. I think the miscarriages and stillbirths arent related to the vaccine at all. I think they would have happened regardless.

Hi, thanks for replies, I found it online can't remember exact source think it may have been from America so they had the vaccine earlier than us? If I think about it rationally I agree with you BellasYummyMummy that they would have happened anyway and are probably just coincidence. But my pregnant brain makes me think all kind of nonsense Hope all goes well with your pregnancy

I had swine flu vaccine a few weeks ago and posted a thread on here after as I had a bit of a wobble and wasnt sure if id done the right thing . . someone posted something on my thread about a link to MC but could provide no link to back it up!

Whilst I TOTALLY believe everyone has the right to choose whether or not they get this vaccine, my experience has been that I now feel a lot happier having had the vaccine. The swine flu virus rate is set to rise dramatically over the winter and the reason pregnant women in their 2nd and 3rd trimester are being urged to get the vaccine is because if a woman in the later stages of pregnanacy gets swine flu the effects can be very serious due to the flu affecting your respiratory system where there is already pressure on these organs. I had originally thought, ive finnished work, wont be in crowded places etc . .but its a virus that can live on surfaces for days so no where is safe.

I eventually weighed it up by thinking that the risk of the vaccine casuing harm to my baby was slim and unknown . .however the risk of me catching swine flu is a REAL risk with REAL known serious (and potentially fatal) consequences.

Its a horrible catch 22 situation but once you've made the decision you have to be safe in the knowledge that you have done the best thing for you and your baby. Good luck X

Hi mummyofthomas,

I had the SF jab last weekend at 16 weeks pg and all seems fine with baby so far. He's been wriggling as normal so I'm not concerned.

To be honest, I worked myself up into a frenzy of panic trying to make the decision but now it's done I'm not stressing about it at all. It's a relief to have made and acted on the decision.

The only side effect I had was a very sore arm for a few days, crikey that hurt!

Z x

Mummyofthomas - I am in the same situation as you - 24 weeks and mildly asthmatic so received 2 letters from my doctors the other day as if to hammer home the point! I am booked in on Saturday and I am still changing my mind every two minutes and have visions of me bolting out of the doctors at the first sign of the needle!

I haven't got any advice or reassurance as there is none out there (the tests on 1000 pg women that went onto have 1000 healthy babies after the jab just doesn't exist unfortunately). We know this is untested but I cannot believe that there is any way that World Health Organisation, let alone the gov't's around the world (and I am very cyncical when it comes to what gov't will/will not do for their own benefit) would authorise a drug for use in pg women if it in any way caused loss of life to the baby. Unfortunately not all babies will make it. So sad but true. There will statistically be pg woman whose pg end badly that had the vaccine but who is to say that this would not have happened anyway.

Good luck with your decision. I hope you feel positive after having the jab and at least it will ease the stress of worrying about catching sf.

The reason pregnant women are so vulnerable is that an enzyme that is found in the lungs, which works to stop bacteria from entering the lungs (and leading to things like phnuemonia)starts to deplete in pregnant women....it is a gradual process and the impact only starts to be felt around midway through a pregnancy....by the time you get to the third trimester the enzyme is almost gone completely, AND your lungs are squashed up. My consultant (who is head of obstetrics at a large london hospital so knows her stuff) told me this last week, as apparently it has only just come to light. This is the reason why most consultants are now so adamant about women getting the jab when their pregnancy is quite far advanced.

I understand that not everyone wants the jab, and some people are less at risk than others (as they don't travel on the tube, or have children at nursery/school) but if you have made the decision to have it, there is sound medical evidence to support that this is a wise decision! (despite what Dr hilary jones on GMTV thinks, as he is not an obstetrician OR an expert in respitory illness!)

I am sure we will all be fine!!!

Just saw this link, helps me put things into perspective a bit - www.telegraph.co.uk/health/swine-flu/6467984/People-will-die-after-swine-flu-vaccine---but-its-just- coincidence.html

Lumpasmelly - thank you for your post - at least we can know why we are so high risk now.

Did you also see on bbc.co.uk today that the vaccine programme is being rolled out to under 5's now too....they mention in the article that even though the number of cases aren't surging as much as they thought, there are concerns about the increasing number of people requiring hospital treatment!

Hi there, thanks for all of your help. I decided to go ahead with the jab and am much more relaxed now I have had it (bloody sore arm though). Of course I will still be slightly concerned about baby's health but I would be anyway until I'm holding him/her in my arms. Now I have the dilema of whether my 15 month old will have it. I think I feel confident that he will. I think these are all just difficult questions/decisions we face as parents. Thanks again for helping me to relax about my decision

Hi there,

I like many others had a hard time trying to work out whether to have the jab or not. I am 23 wks pregnant and I live in central London I work in Oxford street where there are thousands of people everywhere! I decided to get the jab and so far have a sore arm. I had to get on the computer straight away and try to read some things to make me feel better. I am glad I did because I now have a better understanding and feel I made the right decision for me. I saw the following and thought this might help some people. www.babyexpert.com/Pregnancy/Swine-flu-jabs:-Pregnancy,-kids-and-babies./v1

We will always wonder if we did made the right decision and the only thing that will keep us sain until the birth is knowing that contracting the swine flu could be far worse. Good luck with everyone who is faced with this difficult decision.

I've been researching into these reports about miscarriages, which seem to only appear firstly on what can only be described as 'nutjob' blogs and sites and then repeated by worried folk on various forums, which are helping to spread the 'story' far and wide. No reliable news source appears to have picked-up on this ?story?.

It seems all this can be traced back to a report from the ?National Coalition of Organized Women? in the US and when you start looking into this 'organisation' things start to get very interesting.

Wikipedia doesn?t seem to have this ?organisation? listed, however it is listed on Skeptimedia -

"Sources: How the WWW allows one person to seem to be many sources--The Eileen Danneman Story

How do you determine whether a source is reliable? There are a few simple rules of thumb you can use. They're not very tricky or complicated, but applying them isn't always easy. (See chapter three, Sources, of my text Becoming a Critical Thinker. A pdf file is available for free download.) If you're not sure about the reliability of an Internet source, one thing you can do is check out the sources of the site's information. Perhaps you'll recognize the sources. If not, you can look them up and at least see if the website reported the information accurately. You might also learn that the source your source is relying on is not reliable. That's what happened to me when I checked out the sources for the Natural News story on the H1N1 vaccine and miscarriages.

Adams lists several sources, but they all revert back to a single person: Eileen Dannemann. Few people would take a lone maverick seriously, but when you call yourself the director of the National Coalition of Organized Women (NCOW) people might think you're a whole lot of people doing a whole lot of work.

Dannemann is an anti-vaxxer on a mission, and she's discovered that presenting herself as a group is more effective than presenting herself as an individual with a personal agenda. In addition to NCOW, Dannemann is also Progressive Convergence and Vaccine Liberation Army."

LINK: www.skepdic.com/skeptimedia/skeptimedia117.html < well worth reading in full.

On this Dannemann's Vaccine Liberation Army site she has posted about a Dr. Burzynski who she claims has found the cure for cancer.

There's some interesting stuff about this 'doctor' on Wikipedia, including the fact that he's a convicted fraudster.

Therefore I would take anything Dannemann, or any one of her 'organisations', says with a very large pinch of salt. :)