EVANSVILLE, Ind. — After months of encouraging pregnant women to get the COVID-19 vaccine, the CDC is taking it a step further and directly recommending it.
“The reason I didn’t get the vaccine was so that I could have control of my own pregnancy,” said 24-year-old Savannah Moore from Evansville.
But when Moore, who was just seven-and-a-half months pregnant, ended up in the hospital with COVID, she realized it was the virus that was in control now.
“When my OB came and said ‘We’re going to have to put you on the ventilator and deliver Delainey,’ I was saying, ‘This is not her fault. if anything happens, save her,'" Moore said.
She then sent a text to her husband, who was at home and sick with the virus, too.
"All I could tell him was ‘I’m being put on the ventilator, Delainey’s coming,'" she remembers texting.
“I was like, ‘Mom, I should have got the vaccine. I should have got the shot,’” Moore told her mother, who was allowed to be at the hospital with her before Moore was taken to ICU.
Ten days later, Moore woke up, but not before nearly missing the chance to even meet her baby girl, who was in the NICU after being delivered by cesarean section almost eight weeks early.
“I coded for four minutes,” Moore explained. “My OB did not think I was going to make it. It’s a complete miracle that I’m here.”
Looking back, Moore wishes she’d taken the vaccine while pregnant.
“I guess I was hardheaded because even my OB was saying ‘I recommend you get it, I think it’s completely safe’ and I still didn’t listen,” said Moore.
She’s not alone.
According to the CDC, only 23% of pregnant women in the U.S. have gotten the COVID vaccine.
“You’re not choosing between vaccine and nothing. You’re choosing between vaccine and virus,” said Dr. Jon Hathaway with IU Health, who said he’s delivered babies early to unvaccinated mothers who got COVID, just like Moore, and had to be hospitalized.
“These women just can’t breathe, and literally we are saving their lives by delivering their babies early,” Hathaway explained.
He said he hopes more pregnant women will avoid that by following the CDC’s recommendation to get the vaccine.
“We know some of the complications with vaccines happen, but it’s still safer than the actual infection itself,” said Hathaway.
You don’t have to convince Savannah Moore any longer. She got the vaccine after Delainey was born and says when her little girl is old enough to understand, she already has a lesson to teach her.
“I am going to tell her 'don’t be hardheaded like your mom,'” said Moore.
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