KANSAS CITY, Mo. — As a police officer, Sarah Brummer has had to deal with the tragedy of deceased babies. As an expectant mom, she read and heard horror stories in which COVID-19 killed either an unvaccinated mother or her child.
"It was 10 times more intense than any child that I have seen pass on a case," Brummer said of her research on unvaccinated pregnancies. And then a nurse friend told her of caring for a new mother on a ventilator. The baby had died, and the dad was in the intesive care unit. All had COVID.
You better believe Brummer got the COVID-19 vaccine while pregnant. Not just twice, but three times, including a booster.
Meanwhile, down the hall from where she gave birth to a healthy baby boy in a Kansas City area hospital Sept. 24, unvaccinated mothers have had crisis pregnancies in the intensive care unit.
Problems among unvaccinated expectant mothers have gotten so bad that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an urgent health advisory for pregnant women to get vaccinated. Alarmingly, only 31% of them across the nation have been. Tragically, some 22,000 pregnant women have been hospitalized for COVID, with more than 160 dying — in some cases, having never seen their babies.
"It's hard to have a kid in a pandemic and know the right decision, whether to vaccine or not," Brummer says. But that's before doing the research. After hers, and after hearing from her nurse friend, it became an easy decision for Brummer. Especially with her history of asthma, and with the wise counsel of her OB-GYN at Overland Park Regional Medical Center, Dr. Rabiya Suleman. And since all the deaths of kids and moms she'd heard or read about all involved unvaccinated moms.
Among the unvaccinated, COVID-19 and its delta variant can result in premature birth, low birth weight, dangerous bouts with preeclampsia (high blood pressure, possible damage to organs), and even stillbirth, according to Dr. Jessica Parrott, who specializes in high-risk pregnancies at Midwest Maternal Fetal Medicine Physicians in Overland Park.
When Brummer heard the dangers of being unvaccinated directly from her nurse friend, she says, then "it's not just through the grapevine, but it was a patient that she had had, and it became real for her. That, in turn, became real for me."
Parrott not only advises her pregnant patients to get vaccinated, she took the advice herself. She received her first shot last December when she was 19 weeks pregnant — and before all the data that now shows how safe it is.
"Even though it was a new type of vaccination method, vaccines have been given in pregnancy for a long period of time," Parrott says. "And as long as it's not a live virus (which none of the vaccines are), then you're not actually being given the infection. So the risk is really low to a pregnancy.
"Thus far there's been no adverse outcomes in pregnancy on anybody who's gotten the vaccine. And that's whether they got it right before they became pregnant or while they were pregnant. "
In contrast, the risks of being pregnant and unvaccinated are frighteningly clear. "The risk from getting COVID is much more significant than any potential side-effects from the vaccine," Parrott says.
Sadly, and potentially tragically, Parrott says of her patients that while "there's a good majority that I'm able to talk into getting the vaccine, some are still very hesitant." To them, she stresses her own decision to get the shot because of the vaccine's ability to help the fetus in utero. "With knowing that there wasn't going to be a vaccine for infants anytime in the near future, it was my only way of being able to get my son some antibodies and protection against COVID."
In contrast, she says, researchers have found that a COVID infection can inhibit the placenta's ability to pass oxygen and nutrients on to the fetus, which can risk brain damage and more.
In the face of scientific evidence, proven vaccines and the unnecessary risks of remaining unvaccinated, why would anyone, especially pregnant women with a baby to think about, avoid getting the shot? Parrott says it's usually because they don't believe in the vaccine or the risk from COVID-19.
"It's tragic. It does not have to be this way. I would tell them that what we're seeing in the community and seeing in the hospital is a lot different," Parrott says of the vaccine skeptics. "That people are coming in extremely sick. They're still getting extremely ill. I have taken care of patients that have ended up on ventilators in the ICU while pregnant. I have taken care of patients who've ended up with a stillbirth while they were actively infected with COVID."
Brummer took it upon herself to learn the ominous risks of remaining unvaccinated. After dealing with infant mortality in her police job, and hearing and reading of maternal and newborn deaths due to COVID, Brummer certainly wanted to do everything she could to protect her own child. That meant vaccination against COVID.
"If you're pregnant, you're not just thinking about yourself now," Brummer says. "It's a complete mind change, and every new mom knows that. You're thinking about somebody else that's inside you. So, what's best for that baby? To be healthy, I think the vaccine can protect you and that baby."
