Pregnancy Seasonal Vaccinations

During pregnancy, your healthcare provider will recommend you have a selection of vaccinations to protect you and your baby from viruses such as flu, COVID19, or whooping cough. Some of these vaccines are seasonal, such as the flu vaccine, and may only be available during the autumn and winter period. However, all pregnant women are recommended to have the whooping cough vaccine and the RSV vaccine, both of which are designed to pass protection to the baby in utero and will be offered at specific stages during your pregnancy - more on that below.

Vaccines help protect both the mother and the baby. During pregnancy, your immune system is weakened and infections such as flu that would not normally be dangerous can have a more severe impact. While vaccinations won’t always prevent you catching an illness, they do help reduce the symptoms so that you can recover more quickly and without serious side-effects. Vaccinations given during pregnancy also help give your baby some protection until they can start having their immunisations from 8 weeks old.

If you’re travelling abroad, or need additional vaccines during pregnancy, make sure you talk to your healthcare provider, letting them know you are pregnant. Live vaccines (i.e. those which contain the live virus) are not generally recommended during pregnancy – unless the risk of infection is higher than the risk to your unborn baby. All the seasonal vaccines offered to pregnant women are inactive, so do not contain live viruses.