Pregnancy

The CDC just now released a report showing pregnant women are, indeed, at a higher risk for COVID complications.

To say we got confusing and conflicting information in the first few months of the pandemic is an understatement. Sometimes they said pregnant women were fine, sometimes they said otherwise.

It seemed logical that it could be worse for us — our immune systems are suppressed and, especially in the third trimester, our lung capacity has decreased. So I just operated under the assumption that this was bad. And who knows what could be passed on to the baby?

Some of the initial advice was based on a startling low number of cases. Don’t quote me on this, but I want to say the first study was based on 9 births in China, and the second one only around 40 births. And that was the best we had to go off of!

It was encouraging to hear babies born from infected mothers seemed to be OK, but there was still not enough data.

By the end of May, researchers in Chicago discovered the virus was causing damage to the placenta. So scary!!!

It’s crazy to me that some people can be so comfortable and confident about COVID when things have already changed so much in only the first few months it has spread. And the new report only goes to show how little information we still really have.

The latest story from ProPublica:

“After months of asserting pregnant women were not at high risk for the coronavirus, the CDC recently released a study with sobering findings for expectant mothers. Experts say the data gaps are almost as worrisome as the results.”