Everybody in your neighbourhood today is talking about something called the rubella vaccine and you have no clue as to what is this. Should you take it during pregnancy, should you have taken it before pregnancy or what is the rubella vaccine all about? So you go and ask your doctor, that you are planning a pregnancy 2 months from now and you have heard about the precaution of the pre-conceptional advice from your doctor inclusive of the vat of rubella vaccine. Every other young girl who is about to get married or planning to conceive must make sure that either she needs or she does not need the rubella vaccine.

What is rubella?

Rubella is an infectious viral disease that was once called the German measles. This viral infection is like measles and it can cause a red rash on the skin but otherwise, it is not at all related to measles so we did not call rubella by the name the German measles anymore. The rubella virus is transmitted much like the common cold and flu viruses through things like kissing or sharing food and drink or touching things that infected people have touched and then putting your hand to your mouth.

Read More: Vaccines You Need Before Getting Pregnant

All You Need to Know About Rubella Vaccine for Girls Before Pregnancy

Symptoms of rubella infection

• About two weeks after being exposed to the virus symptoms can start. There is often an initial few days of low-grade fever, tiredness, lymph gland swelling and nasal congestion, then a rash starts on the face progressing over the rest of the body, then fading away in about three days.
• For young children, up to 50% of kids infected don’t get ill at all and most of the rest have a relatively mild illness.
• However, complications of rubella can happen with the greater frequency in adults who get the infection they include joint aching and swelling which is quite common in adult women. Those symptoms may last up to a month. Encephalitis or brain inflammation occurs in up to one of every 6,000 infected people.
• More commonly in adults encephalitis can one out of every 3,000 infected people may have bleeding problems this can be from low platelet counts or blood vessel. Damage effects from this last four months and can be life-threatening.

Read More: 5 Vaccines that are Safe to Get While Breastfeeding

Rubella and pregnancy

• The most feared complication of rubella and the most important reason to make sure that everyone in the US is protected from this disease is called congenital rubella syndrome.
• If a pregnant woman becomes infected early in her pregnancy with rubella the virus can spread to the baby developing in her womb.
• The results can be devastating, deafness is the most common manifestation, eye defects including cataracts and glaucoma, life-threatening heart problems and brain abnormalities causing mental retardation are all products of congenital rubella syndrome.

Rubella vaccine

It is good news indeed when the rubella vaccine came into general use. In the nineteen cases of rubella infection and congenital rubella syndrome went way down and have stayed down. Since then the rubella vaccine is part of the regular childhood vaccination schedule. It is combined together with the measles and the mumps vaccines in the MMR vaccine which is usually injected in the child’s thigh. It is recommended to be given twice at ages 12 to 15 months and again at four years of age before kindergarten.

The rubella vaccine work well with at least 95% of people attaining long-term protection against through the rubella virus. The rubella vaccine pregnancy is very safe. It’s important for boys and men to be immunized so that we won’t unknowingly past rubella virus to a pregnant woman as well as to protect ourselves from the disease. Please make sure your loved ones are vaccinated with the MMR vaccine.

Read More: Vaccines During Pregnancy: Everything You Need to Know about

Under what cases you should take rubella vaccine before pregnancy

• It is advisable to visit your doctor for the same, as everything depends on your blood test report. The doctor asks for a blood test in which the rubella IGG is positive then she declares that is in your childhood you may have already had this infection, is just like that having had chickenpox and you already naturally vaccinated or humanized for that and you want a requirement for a rubella vaccine pregnancy. So the doctor will not advise you for any vaccine but in case the test is negative then he/she says you can get the rubella infection and what is rubella infection due to the pregnancy.
• Well, that is the terminology called congenital rubella syndrome, first of all, you may have an abortion or your child may bear with malformations.
• So, it is ideal for every young girl to have tested for rubella proved that she needs a vaccine or otherwise and it’s a simple vaccine to take just one shot of rubella vaccine. And for a month or two after that you must not get pregnant, that advice will be given by a doctor as well.
• But the children born as on today have a vaccine in there with regular vaccination schedule which is called the are MMR (mumps, measles and rubella). So, when your daughter grows up she will neither be the testing nor the vaccination for rubella because you have already made sure as her mum that you would have given the MMR vaccine well before she crosses 1 year of age.
• These are a new era or the new generation of children which do not need to reflect on situations of conditions like rubella because they are already been vaccinated is a childhood. But otherwise, every other young girl who is about to get married or planning to conceive must make sure that either she needs or she does not need the rubella vaccine. Please ask your doctor for more information.

Is It Safe To Get Vaccinated During Pregnancy?

It depends on the type of vaccine you’re considering. Doctors recommend that pregnant women not get vaccines that use live, attenuated (weakened) viruses, such as the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) and chicken pox vaccines. But they strongly recommend that moms-to-be do get these two: the flu (influenza) and Tdap (tetanus-diphtheria-acellular pertussis) vaccines. Generally, vaccines not recommended during pregnancy.

Theoretically, the MMR vaccine could lead to rubella (German measles) infection in a pregnant woman, but studies to date show the real risk to be nonexistent.

Read More: Must Have Vaccines During Your Pregnancy

Conclusion

Coming down with rubella (German measles) during pregnancy is known to cause mental retardation, deafness, eye problems, and heart defects in babies. But many women have received the MMR vaccine while pregnant and delivered healthy babies. If you got the MMR in the early weeks of your pregnancy before you knew you were carrying a child, keep in mind that the risk for birth defects is purely theoretical and has never been found to be real.