While you are pregnant your immune system is weaker. This means that you have a higher chance of picking up bacterial and viral infections; even if you are usually fit and healthy.
Vaccinations are a very safe and effective way of keeping you, your baby and your growing family healthy and safe.
Some vaccine-preventable diseases can pose serious risk to your health and that of your developing baby. At the moment we are most concerned about COVID-19, rubella (German measles), measles, flu (influenza) and whooping cough (pertussis) as there is a lot of this around at the moment.
Now showing: Video 1 of 12
Video description: Vaccines in Pregnancy (English subtitles)
Video description: Vaccines in Pregnancy (Arabic subtitles)
Video description: Vaccines in Pregnancy (French subtitles)
Video description: Vaccines in Pregnancy (Bengali subtitles)
Video description: Vaccines in Pregnancy (Cantonese subtitles)
Video description: Vaccines in Pregnancy (Gujarati subtitles)
Video description: Vaccines in Pregnancy (Polish subtitles)
Video description: Vaccines in Pregnancy (Portuguese subtitles)
Video description: Vaccines in Pregnancy (Punjabi subtitles)
Video description: Vaccines in Pregnancy (Spanish subtitles)
Video description: Vaccines in Pregnancy (Urdu subtitles)
Video description: Vaccines in Pregnancy (Welsh subtitles)
When you are injected with a vaccine, your body starts creating antibodies which build up over 1-2 weeks. These are your fighter cells that come into force when your body comes in contact with infections.
Following a vaccine, your blood contains lots of antibodies and should you come in contact with the actual infection, your body is ready to fight it. This means either:
The antibodies produced when you get vaccinated cross the placenta. This means that when your baby is born, they are already protected against infections, even before they are old enough to get vaccinated themselves. This is one of the only ways of protecting extremely young babies against vaccine preventable infections (because the first routine immunisations that babies receive are at 8 weeks of life).
You baby will start receiving their own vaccinations against preventable infections at around 8 weeks of age. Their immune system will be too weak to start their vaccinations before this point and they would not create the protection (antibodies) they need. Therefore, unless you have had the vaccinations in pregnancy, your baby will not be protected until they start having their own vaccinations.
