Everyone, welcome back to parently. I'm Dr. Boyd talking about a very important topic today for a lot of women vaccines. Now, it's important to understand just because vaccinations are recommended by the FDA and the CDC and a CoC, you as the patient, have the ultimate authority on whether you want to take the vaccine or not, don't ever be pressured by your health care provider that you should have a vaccine. Now there's three vaccines that are safe in pregnancy. I want to address all three of those here in just a minute but prior to doing that, I want to mention the MMR vaccine. The MMR vaccine stands for mumps, measles and rubella.
We used to think that women once they received the MMR vaccine as a five year old that they were immune for life and we found out a number of years ago that was not correct. So you as a patient will have a rubella immune or not immune status. If you're rebelling non immune, we will recommend to you that receive the MMR vaccine. If you receive the MMR vaccine, we recommend that you wait one month before you allow pregnancy to occur. important that you wait that month, I want to talk about the three vaccines that are safe in pregnancy. The influenza vaccine is the most common and the one that you will hear most about is a pregnant woman.
The influenza virus or the flu virus attacks the United States and the world every single year and the flu season goes from the end of August, so September 1, until the end of March. So that six to seven month period of time, if you so desire, and again, it's CDC, FDA, and a colleague recommended that you receive the flu vaccine. The second vaccine is the T gap vaccine. That's the tetanus that theory and pertussis vaccine. Now pertussis is whooping cough. And this vaccine is actually recommended between 27 weeks and 36 weeks to decrease your chance that your baby could develop whooping cough.
The third vaccine is Hepatitis B. hepatitis B vaccine is completely safe in pregnancy. It is only needed though for people that are in environments where they may be exposed to the hepatitis B virus. That is healthcare providers. So if you're a phlebotomist or you're a nurse or a doctor, those would be recommendations for you to receive the hepatitis B vaccine series. It's a three shot vaccination series and you receive it over a time period. That's it for vaccines today.
I hope that was helpful. Have a great day.