If you're currently pregnant, you might have heard that leading health officials and experts from groups including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine (SMFM) now strongly recommend that all pregnant women get the COVID-19 vaccine.

But many moms-to-be still haven't gotten their shots: Only about 31 percent of pregnant people aged 18 to 49 have gotten at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S., compared to about 75 percent of all adults, according to the CDC.

“Many of these women are hesitant because they worry that it will impact their baby’s health,” says Oluwatosin Goje, M.D., an OB/GYN at the Cleveland Clinic and member of the What to Expect Medical Review Board. “But the reality is that in order to have a healthy baby, we need to have a healthy mother, too.”

It's understandable if you have questions about the COVID-19 vaccines during pregnancy — after all, none of us have experienced a pandemic before, and all parents want what's best for their little ones. But leading experts stress that there’s plenty of evidence to show that the vaccines are safe and effective for both moms-to-be and their developing babies.

If you've been reluctant or on the fence, here are seven reassuring facts about the safety of the vaccines that will hopefully help you feel confident getting your shot at any point during pregnancy.

The vaccines are not "experimental." Although the COVID-19 vaccines themselves were developed recently, the technology behind them is hardly new. "All three vaccines use platforms that have actually been studied for decades,” notes William Schaffner, M.D., an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. The mRNA technology found in the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines has been used in human trials of cancer vaccines since at least 2011 — as a result, researchers have studied mRNA vaccines for years, and we have plenty of strong safety data about them. The same is true for the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, which is a viral vector vaccine: The company uses a disabled version of a live virus known as an adenovirus to deliver genetic material from the COVID-19 virus into your body’s cells. This adenovirus has also been studied for years as part of the company’s large-scale Ebola vaccination trial, including in pregnant women.
No safety corners were cut. You may have wondered whether the vaccines are any less safe due to the speed at which they were developed. But as with all vaccines in the U.S., the COVID-19 vaccines have undergone clinical trials to test their safety and effectiveness. The vaccines were given to tens of thousands of people in areas where high levels of COVID-19 were circulating, which allowed researchers to get data quickly. Drug companies were also able to ramp up production at the same time as clinical trials were ongoing to ensure there would be a ready supply once vaccines were authorized for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The vaccines are highly effective in preventing serious outcomes from COVID-19. We know that pregnant people who get COVID-19 are more likely to develop severe illness or complications, including hospitalization and intubation, as well as increased risks to their babies, such as preterm birth or admission to a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). If you're vaccinated, you’re less likely to develop COVID-19 yourself, or to have mild symptoms from a breakthrough infection. That’s important, stresses Leslie Sude, M.D., a Yale School of Medicine pediatrician in New Haven, Connecticut. “Anytime a mother is seriously ill, it can affect a baby’s brain development and growth during pregnancy, and raise [the] risk of a premature birth," she says.
We have reassuring safety data about the vaccines during pregnancy. There is plenty of real-world evidence showing that the vaccines are safe and effective for moms-to-be. The CDC has been following vaccinated pregnant women to make sure there aren’t any adverse effects for mom or baby through three safety monitoring systems: the V-safe After Vaccination Health Checker monitoring health check-in system, the V-safe COVID-19 Pregnancy Registry and the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). A report published this past June in the New England Journal of Medicine found no safety concerns for 35,691 pregnant participants aged 16 to 54 years old who received an mRNA vaccine. Rates of poor neonatal outcomes — including preterm birth or small size for gestational age — were similar to incidence rates reported in studies involving pregnant women that were done before the COVID-19 pandemic.
There's no evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines increase miscarriage risk. A common myth about the COVID-19 vaccines during pregnancy is that vaccination may up your risk of miscarriage, the unexpected end of a pregnancy before 20 weeks. But we have plenty of data showing that there is no increased risk of miscarriage. "[W]e all know that pregnancy, there is always a risk of a spontaneous miscarriage," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Chief Medical Advisor to the President, in a recent interview with What to Expect founder Heidi Murkoff. "However, when you look at the unvaccinated versus the vaccinated, there is absolutely no increased risk of that."
The vaccine can't give you or your baby COVID-19. Another common misconception is that the COVID-19 vaccine could cause a person to become infected with the virus. But none of the vaccines contain the live virus itself, and they can’t make anyone sick — including a developing fetus, stresses Dr. Schaffner.
Vaccination during pregnancy might provide your child with added protection once she's born. Research suggests that being vaccinated during pregnancy might confer immunity for your newborn. A small study published this past September in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology found that the antibodies made after pregnant and breastfeeding women received an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine were also found in their breast milk and in baby’s umbilical cord blood. Several other studies, including a small one published in April in the Journal of the American Medical Association, have also found that vaccinated moms who are nursing have antibodies in their breast milk that they may pass on to their babies. "We need more data, but theoretically this means their babies may get some protection against infection from the COVID-19 virus, even though they’re still too young to be vaccinated themselves,” says Goje. “That’s good news, for both moms and their infants.”