There are Amsterdam residents who doubt whether they will be vaccinated against the corona virus. Yet more than 70 percent have had a shot. This percentage is much lower for pregnant women or women who would like to have a child.
Liesbeth van Leeuwen is a gynaecologist at the Amsterdam UMC. Every day she sees women who want to become pregnant and wonder whether they should be vaccinated.“To date we have no indications that vaccination is harmful to your fertility”.
“Some women don’t have their period for a while after being vaccinated and that’s where the association comes in whether it makes you infertile. But in fact, that menstrual cycle usually recovers after a month, at most two months and it does nothing with your egg supply. it doesn’t make you infertile, and we don’t see any decline in sperm quality in men after vaccination either.”
Women who are already pregnant are also less likely to be vaccinated against the virus. Three out of six of them have had a shot.
“I think it’s a very difficult choice. Am I going to do it, am I not going to do it?” says a pregnant woman. Another woman also hesitated for a long time, but finally did it. “I was afraid it would do something to the baby. But that fear didn’t feel justified enough not to do it.”
Another pregnant woman is very adamant. “I have a good immune system and I also do not want to be vaccinated during my pregnancy. I think that is too high a risk.”
At the Amsterdam UMC they see no negative effects of the vaccination on the unborn child. Liesbeth van Leeuwen explains it with an anatomical model of a uterus. “The baby’s blood flow is closed off from the mother’s blood flow. In the case of the corona vaccine, this is broken down very quickly and those antibodies do go to the child via the umbilical cord. This also protects the child against a corona infection,” he said. said van Leeuwen.
The possible disadvantages of the vaccination therefore do not outweigh the consequences of a corona infection in pregnant women for gynecologist van Leeuwen. “We see especially in the third trimester, from 28 weeks of pregnancy, that women end up in intensive care”. Premature births and preeclampsia are also more common in pregnant women with a corona infection.
She therefore advises women to be vaccinated. “I’m really for it, especially when you see those excesses here. When you see what kind of misery that is and that they are all unvaccinated women, it makes me really sad.”
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