Credit: Unsplash

This little girl gets to start with an edge over the competition.

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous children have been born all over the world. That’s not news, obviously, but the interesting thing is that some of these births have occurred from mothers who were at the time infected with the disease. Some of the babies who were born were found to already have COVID-19 antibodies in their systems. So we know that such an event can occur if the mother is infected, but what about when she’s vaccinated? Can she pass on some of a vaccine’s protective traits to her children. Turns out, yes she can!

According to a recently published research paper, a mother and healthcare worker from Florida received her first shot of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine while pregnant with her daughter. When she gave birth to that daughter, the infant was found to already have COVID-19 antibodies in her system, passed to her from her mother through the placenta, just like the mothers who gave birth while infected. This was the first recorded instance of a vaccinated mother giving birth.

At 36 weeks pregnant, a Florida health care worker received her first shot of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine​. She gave birth three weeks later to a healthy baby girl — with COVID-19 antibodies. https://t.co/n7YCv0wXhj

— KDKA (@KDKA) March 17, 2021

The baby, who was born lively and in perfect health, had developed COVID-19 IgG antibodies thanks to her mother’s vaccination. These antibodies are the same kind that typically develop in a human body after they’ve recovered from a disease. Doctors aren’t quite sure how effective these antibodies are against a COVID-19 infection or how long they’ll be present within the baby’s systems, but this is still a positive development for the fight against the pandemic. Assuming this isn’t a minority case, not only does it prove the vaccines are safe for pregnant women, they actually give babies a little extra defense against the virus. Of course, babies are fairly low-risk as far as COVID-19 infections go, but hey, who’s gonna say no to a little extra defense?