Results:
Data were collected by professionals from the postpartum ward. A total of 365 women filled out the questionnaire. The mean body mass index was 28.6 ± 5.1 years, and the modal age range was 26–35 years. A total of 289 participants had taken the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, 266 had taken the second dose, and 102 had taken the third dose. Approximately 57% of the subject had COVID-19 previously, either before or during pregnancy. It was noticed that some subjects were getting an infection with COVID-19 after vaccination; 88 (24%) during pregnancy and 116 (32%) after delivery. We found that 32 women had gestational diabetes, 26 had hypertension, and 33 had preeclampsia.
Regarding amniotic fluid changes, it was noticed that 14 participants had oligohydramnios and 14 had polyhydramnios. It was found that 197 women had vaginal delivery, 166 underwent cesarean delivery, and only two newborns delivered by vacuum . It was also found that 14 participants had placenta abruption and 26 experienced postpartum hemorrhage. These complications affected the length of hospitalization as it was found that 184 women were hospitalized for one day, 141 for 2–3 days, and 40 for more than three days, as shown in Table 1.
The main finding results showed that the mean gestational age for the unvaccinated women was 38.83 ± 1.62 weeks, which is considered significantly higher (p = 0.001) than that for vaccinated women (37.69 ± 2.9 weeks). However, the average gestational age of vaccinated women with the second and third doses was similar to that of vaccinated women with the first dose (37.63 weeks and 37.89 weeks, respectively).
Corresponding results showed that the mean birth weight for unvaccinated women was 2.96 ± 0.4 kg, which did not differ significantly (with p = 0.89) from the mean birth weight for vaccinated women (2.97 ± 0.66 kg). It increased after the second and third dose dose to (2.98 ± 0.68 kg , 3.11 ± 0.56 kg) respectively. All these variations were not statistically significant, as shown in Tables 2 and 3. A comparison of the gestational age at delivery and birth weight between vaccinated and unvaccinated delivered women is shown in Figure 1, together with data for the second and third doses.
Conversely, regarding the perinatal outcome for newborns (NBs), we found that 14 NBs had respiratory complications, two had a fever,and 24 NB were admitted to the NICU, we noticed that none tested positive for COVID-19 irrespective of whether the mothers were vaccinated or unvaccinated
Figure 1: Gestational age in weeks and birth weight for NBs after delivery for vaccinated and unvaccinated women. The figure also shows differences between vaccinated women with different doses.