Transcription: Speaker 1: You're listening to the CONVERSATIONS podcast with Emory Gynecology and Obstetrics. This series is a continuation of our popular video series created to highlight the need for ongoing conversations around women's reproductive health. Speaker 1: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to our podcast with Emory Gynecology and Obstetrics. Today we are having a wonderful conversation with one of our assistant professors here at Emory University's Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, and that is Dr. Dawn Russell. Today we're going to be talking about how to have a healthy pregnancy in the time of COVID and we felt like she would be the perfect person to have this conversation with. Dr. Russell, thank you so much for making time to speak with us today. Dawn Russell: My pleasure. Speaker 1: So I know that I mentioned to everyone that you are an assistant professor here within our department, but is there anything else about you in particular that you'd love to share with anyone who's listening about yourself, as a physician, as an educator? Dawn Russell: Well, I think it's important to know that I am coming in not as an infectious disease expert and not as somebody who's labeled as an expert, except by experience. I've had over 25 years of helping moms get their families started and have over that time become almost obsessed with helping them do it in a healthy way. So this is exactly my soap box and I'm absolutely thrilled to talk about it. I also would mention that I'm up at Johns Creek, which is a specific Emory clinic that we opened within the last two years. Very excited to spread the Emory brand name and support up to our women up in the north area. Speaker 1: That's amazing. So you mentioned it right off the top, and I think this is probably the biggest question you get from any one of your patients, which is, "I am pregnant. How do I do this in a healthy way?" So help us sort of wrap our heads around what does a healthy pregnancy look like and how can someone really foster a healthy pregnancy? Dawn Russell: So I think the most important thing to remember is that pregnancy is not an illness. It is a healthy, healthy process. And from there everybody can use their own common sense and even their own healthy habits to help a healthy pregnancy. So, first of all, where does that start for all of us, it's exercise, nutrition and healthy mindset. So the first thing I asked my pregnant patients to do, and in fact, my non-pregnant patients to do, is please, this is a time to really get good habits going. So start with a really good nutrition plan. Now, not everybody knows what that is, and I think we all need to admit that. So starting from looking at your plate and understanding that what's on it, you should recognize. If you can't recognize it or it's been processed so far beyond recognition, probably not the best of things to give yourself. Dawn Russell: The simple tricks, like shopping in the edge of the grocery store for the things that you can identify. And other than that, I often will give out as a reference nutrition.gov. The FDA and government did a fantastic job putting together a website that can actually give you useful information and even put meal plans together for you. So if you're unsure about nutrition, that's a good place to start. Dawn Russell: The other side of the nutrition is the exercise. So there's this nasty rumor out there that pregnant people can't start exercise or they can't exercise. And I'm here to debunk that rumor, we need you working out, we need you exercising. We need you keeping healthy, and there's not really limits on heart rate and you can lift weights. So under almost all circumstances, healthy, pregnant women can do healthy things. Along those lines I also encourage things like meditation. Now, this is something that people have kind of gone overboard in the past and thought it was weird, or crunchy, or different, but it's really not. It's about being mindful and understanding that your brain needs exercise and rest, just like your body needs exercise and rest. So that really is the general recommendation is that pregnant women are women and they're healthy women. And so what you do that is healthy is going to lead to a healthy pregnancy. Speaker 1: Well, it sounds so simplistic when you put it that way, that it makes you realize that probably one of the biggest barriers for people really understanding how to be healthy in the time of pregnancy is a lot of fear, right? And it's a lot of trying to navigate the unknown of what do I do in my body that is now changing and different? And it sort of makes you move against what you know to be true. Like you said, like nutrition and exercise and all of those things? Dawn Russell: Well, and I don't think that ... Unfortunately social media and some media haven't helped always, because there's definitely a lot of fear mongering, fear encouragement out there. And I'm here to take that away and say, "No, trust yourselves, trust your bodies. Start to use your common sense." Remember, your great-great-grandmother did not have random things on internet and Instagram. She did it right, because you're here. So remember to use your common sense. Speaker 1: Well, and to the point that you spoke about things sort of fostering fear and a lot of misinformation, we know candidly that we're in a time where there's such increased focus around how do I have a healthy pregnancy in the time of COVID. And I think there's so many questions. Certainly if you go on Google right now and you Googled pregnancy and COVID, you would have a barrage of misinformation. And so we're hopeful that we can debunk, as you said, some of that today, but also to help remove some of the fear around that. So I think one of the number one questions that I saw when I was sort of Googling COVID and pregnancy, are pregnant women at an increased risk for COVID because of their pregnancy? Dawn Russell: So there's two parts to that question. The first part is, am I at increased risk of getting COVID because I am pregnant? And the answer to that is that we don't think so. Again, you're a normal woman and women and old people are at risk of getting COVID of course if they don't follow certain precautions, which we'll get into a little bit later. The other part of that question is, what might COVID do to me if I am pregnant? Dawn Russell: And please remember that we are a year into this pandemic. And so there's a lot of things we know, and there's a lot of experience we've had, but there's also still some things we're figuring out. One of the things that we have figured out is that pregnant women can get sicker than some others sometimes when they get COVID. Now, the very important part of that statement is sometimes, it does not appear to be a high risk. It appears to be a low risk. However, for that reason we of course want our pregnant women to avoid getting COVID, but they're not at increased risk because they're pregnant to get the COVID, but they may be at increased risk for complications or getting sicker if they do get COVID. Speaker 1: Taking that into consideration, should pregnant people be doing something differently in order to lower their risk of catching COVID? Should they be doing anything different than what we know is sort of like the right things to do in order to lower your risk? Dawn Russell: So the brief answer is no, and we're not going to leave it at that. Everybody needs to be following the pillars, which are washing your hands, wearing a face mask, and keeping at least six feet of social distance. So those same things apply to pregnant women, I would hope most people are following them. If pregnant women specifically, if any person feels that they're in a situation that other people are not respecting those pillars, or if they are feeling that there's just too much social interaction or too much increased risk, they should feel free to remove themselves. But again, I'm going to say them again, because they're important. Wash your hands, wear a face mask, and keep social distancing. Speaker 1: Well, when you think about this idea of doing all of the right things in order to lower your risk of catching COVID, I think probably the most pressing concern right now for pregnant persons is vaccination. So we've made tremendous advances in order to get vaccines out into our communities. And so a lot of pregnant people are asking the question, "Should I get vaccinated?" And they want to know what are the risks to themselves and to the fetus. Can you answer that? Dawn Russell: I can do the best I can. The truth is, is nobody can fully answer that question, but I'll explain why. First of all, I'd like to just put a positive note on the fact that as humans in just less than a year of having a pandemic we created a vaccine. So I want to create that it's just a very positive aspect of where we are in medicine and science right now. The catch is, is that this is a newer vaccine. It uses a methodology that we haven't used before. So as a result we don't have really great data on pregnant women. In fact, we have basically none. However, we can use our knowledge and we can use our experience and say that what we do know about this way of giving a vaccine is there's not a theoretical risk that it would be any harm to a mom or a baby. Dawn Russell: People will throw around the phrase mRNA. And unfortunately that gets confused with our actual DNA and genetics. This is a [inaudible 00:10:38] way of getting the vaccine to ourselves, but it's not something that sticks around. It is not something that affects our DNA. It's not something that affects our genetics. So it won't affect our fertility. It won't affect us in any long-lasting way. For that reason we also feel it's going to cross the placenta. So we really don't feel that this will affect the fetus in any way, which is often a mom's first question. Dawn Russell: And then the next questi
