I Was Nervous About Getting the COVID-19 Vaccine While Pregnant. Here ’s What Convinced Me to Do It

In March, when President Biden announced that COVID-19 vaccines would soon be available to all Americans, my husband and I decided to press pause on the whole maybe-getting-pregnant-soon thing. We would get our vaccines first, have a Hot Vaxxed Summer full of booze and parties, and then go back to the kids question once we had shaken off the COVID cobwebs. Lucky for us, it was too late: it turned out I was already pregnant. I was thrilled, but also anxious. I had been all-in on getting the vaccine; getting it while pregnant was a different story. At the time, the CDC had not yet issued a full-throated recommendation that pregnant women should get the vaccine: pregnant women were eligible, and the research suggested it was safe and effective, but the agency was essentially saying “it’s up to you,” urging women to talk to their health care providers about it. And my doctor wasn’t exactly pushing me one way or the other: her exact words when I asked her advice in April were “sure, if you want!” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Read More: These Moms Work as Doctors and Scientists. But They’ve Also Taken On Another Job: Fighting COVID-19 Misinformation Online None of this was particularly reassuring. On the one hand, it made me anxious that pregnant women had been excluded from the early clinical trials of the vaccine. I also thought I was low-risk for contracting COVID-19: I’d already had it the year before, and it was...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 healthscienceclimate uspoliticspolicy Source Type: news