Sara Chamberlin cared for COVID-19 patients in intensive care for the first year of the pandemic and so, when the chance to get vaccinated arrived, she got the shots — even though she was pregnant.

“I remember doing chest compressions on a man while I stared at his daughter’s quinceañera photos on the wall,” she said of her job as a registered nurse.

“He was too young to die. I didn’t want to be on a ventilator when my daughter was born, or leave my daughter without a mother.”

Chamberlin was in her second trimester when she received the Pfizer vaccines in March 2021. Her healthy baby was born in July.

“At the time, there was no recommendation about pregnant women getting the vaccine because there wasn’t enough information to make a recommendation so I had to do a risk-benefit evaluation for myself,” Chamberlin said.

“I knew there was possible unknown risk with the vaccine, but there were several known real risks with infection.”

Currently, those who are pregnant are one of the lowest vaccination groups nationwide. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that only 42.6% of pregnant people were fully vaccinated as of Jan. 15, 2022, compared to about 64% of the population ages 5 and older overall.

Those who are pregnant or were recently pregnant are more likely to get severely ill if infected with COVID-19 compared to women who are not pregnant, the CDC reports. This is because pregnancy causes changes in the body that makes it easier to get severely ill from viruses.

To help people in Pima County make the decision about vaccines during pregnancy, the Pima County Health Department is partnering with Tucson Medical Center to bring two virtual town halls.

The first of these online sessions will be held at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 2, and a second one, in Spanish, will be held at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 9. For more information, to register and to see the list of panelists, visit pima.gov/covid19pregnancy.

The recommendation for vaccinations during pregnancy is “very unambiguous,” said Dr. Francisco Garcia, the county’s chief medical officer whose medical training is in obstetrics and gynecology.

“It’s normal for women to want to do a double take,” he said, “but the evidence is incontrovertible that the vaccinations are a real benefit to the mom and to the baby.”

Chamberlin said there is now enough data for medical professionals to recommend vaccination to those who are pregnant. Both the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the CDC now emphasize the importance of COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy.

“If I were pregnant now instead of when I was,” she said, “I would get it in the first trimester, or before becoming pregnant.”

That’s what Cassie Breneman and her husband decided was their best course of action: don’t try to get pregnant with their second child until after becoming fully vaccinated.

“I was definitely nervous about doing the shot while I was pregnant,” she said, explaining that while she is not hesitant about vaccines in general, she did not want to risk running a fever early on in pregnancy.

“The science was all so fresh at that point. Fortunately we didn’t have to make that choice.”

The couple received their vaccinations early last spring and their second child was born mid-January. Breneman received her booster when she was about 32 weeks pregnant.

“At that point, we felt he would probably be fine even if I did get a fever,” she said, referring to the baby’s weight and development at that time.

Jenna Matty was in her third trimester when she got vaccinated in October. Like Breneman, she was concerned about running a fever any earlier in her pregnancy.

Her second child was born in mid-December.

The decision to get the vaccine while pregnant was “a tough decision,” she said. “We went back and forth a lot.”

Matty said she didn’t have any complications from the vaccine shots, other than an achy arm.

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Contact reporter Patty Machelor at 806-7754 or