Vaccines pregnant women should get before and during pregnancy
Before pregnancy, you need to get vaccinated against measles, mumps, rubella, and chickenpox; during pregnancy, get vaccinated against flu and whooping cough.
During pregnancy, the immune system of pregnant women is low, making them susceptible to disease, which is harmful to both mother and baby. Mothers who receive certain vaccines during pregnancy will have antibodies passed on to their babies, protecting them in the first months of life.
Flu vaccine
When a woman is pregnant, her body undergoes many changes to adapt to carrying a "foreign creature". The mother's body sees the fetus as a transplant organ, so it tends to reject it. The mother's immune system is reduced to accept the transplant organ in the body until the baby is born.
The heart and lungs of pregnant women also change to adapt to the fetus. Therefore, if the mother has certain infectious diseases such as flu or chickenpox, there is a risk of complications that affect the fetus. During the global H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009, the majority of deaths in Vietnam were pregnant women.
Flu vaccines can be given before or during pregnancy to prevent pregnancy complications such as miscarriage, premature birth or low birth weight. The vaccine also prevents flu in infants, especially in the first 6 months of life, thanks to the antibodies produced by the mother after the flu vaccination that are passed to the baby through the placenta. Babies are not vaccinated for the first flu shot until they are 6 months old.
Note, pregnant women should not use the nasal spray flu vaccine, because this is a live attenuated vaccine, contraindicated for pregnant women.
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Whooping cough vaccine
Whooping cough vaccine is recommended for pregnant women. Many studies have shown that babies born to mothers who are vaccinated against whooping cough are less likely to get the disease than babies born to unvaccinated mothers. Whooping cough is most dangerous when it occurs in newborns or infants.
Tetanus and diphtheria vaccine
The Vietnamese Ministry of Health recommends tetanus vaccination for pregnant women. Meanwhile, the world recommends additional diphtheria vaccination for pregnant women.
Measles - mumps - rubella, chickenpox vaccine
Currently, recommendations for women preparing to become pregnant are to get the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) and chickenpox vaccines. The waiting period for MMR is at least one month before pregnancy, and for chickenpox at least three months before. Pregnancy can be achieved one month after getting the chickenpox vaccine.
MMR and chickenpox are both live attenuated vaccines, so when injected into the body, they will cause mild symptoms, and can sometimes affect the fetus if the mother becomes pregnant early. Some cases do not know they are pregnant so they still get this vaccine, and doctors do not recommend terminating the pregnancy. To date, there is no scientific evidence that the fetus will be affected by these vaccines.
Women who get chickenpox during pregnancy have a 10% risk of developing pneumonia, the fetus may be affected in the process of forming limbs, visual and neurological abnormalities, creating skin scars. Newborns are at high risk of getting chickenpox if the mother gets chickenpox from 4 days before to 2 days after birth, affecting internal organs, even death.