KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Police officer and expectant mom Sarah Brummer had read and heard horror stories in which COVID-19 killed either an unvaccinated mother or her child.

“It was 10 times more intense than any child that I have seen pass on a case,” Brummer said.

Brummer got the COVID-19 vaccine while pregnant. Not just twice, but three times, including a booster.

Meanwhile, down the hall from where she gave birth to a healthy baby boy in a Kansas City area hospital Sept. 24, unvaccinated mothers have had crisis pregnancies in the intensive care unit.

Problems among unvaccinated expectant mothers have gotten so bad that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an urgent health advisory for pregnant women to get vaccinated. Only 31% of them across the nation have been. Some 22,000 pregnant women have been hospitalized for COVID, with more than 160 dying.

Among the unvaccinated, COVID-19 and its delta variant can result in premature birth, low birth weight, dangerous bouts with preeclampsia (high blood pressure, possible damage to organs), and even stillbirth, according to Dr. Jessica Parrott, who specializes in high-risk pregnancies at Midwest Maternal Fetal Medicine Physicians in Overland Park.

Parrott not only advises her pregnant patients to get vaccinated, she took the advice herself. She received her first shot last December when she was 19 weeks pregnant — and before all the data that now shows how safe it is.

“Even though it was a new type of vaccination method, vaccines have been given in pregnancy for a long period of time,” Parrott said. “And as long as it’s not a live virus (which none of the vaccines are), then you’re not actually being given the infection. So the risk is really low to a pregnancy.

“Thus far there’s been no adverse outcomes in pregnancy on anybody who’s gotten the vaccine. And that’s whether they got it right before they became pregnant or while they were pregnant.”

In contrast, the risks of being pregnant and unvaccinated are frighteningly clear. “The risk from getting COVID is much more significant than any potential side-effects from the vaccine,” Parrott said.