Kristen T.
Kristen T. is an executive assistant in the System Administration Department for Thompson Health. When the vaccine was first offered to Thompson associates, she was in the first trimester of her first pregnancy.
“I was like, ‘If I wasn’t pregnant, I’d get it in a heartbeat,’ but this was my first child and I was nervous about everything,” she said, noting that “everything” truly meant everything, both COVID-related and non-COVID-related.
Time went on, and Kristen was about 10 weeks into the pregnancy when she had a checkup with her nurse-midwife, Laura Burgess of the OB-GYN practice within Thompson’s Canandaigua Medical Group. The two women talked about the risks involved with contracting COVID during pregnancy, including blood clots.
Kristen then waited until she was out of her first trimester, going to a Thompson vaccine clinic when she was 13 weeks pregnant. There, she spoke to Dr. Marc Zarfes, who had recently retired from Thompson’s Farmington Family Medicine. He was on hand to answer anyone’s questions and help anyone who wasn’t feeling well during their 15-minute, post-vaccine waiting period.
She asked Dr. Zarfes if the vaccine is what he would recommend if it was his wife and child. He said that it was. “It was like, ‘All right.’ It made sense to me, and then I was perfectly fine.”
Kristen had a sore arm after the first vaccine dose. For about 24 hours following the second, she experienced aches and chills, as some others have reported. Doctors say it’s because their immune systems are revving up and reacting.
The remainder of her pregnancy went well. As for her son, who was born in August, “He’s perfect.”
In fact, Kristen knows she may have passed antibodies on to the baby.
“With things potentially getting worse again,” she said, “I’m glad he has that layer of protection.”
Of the vaccine, Kristen said, “It doesn’t have to be this big, scary thing.”
“I think you have more to worry about if you don’t get it,” she said.
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