can an hiv patient give birth to a healthy baby.?

Question

my sister is an hiv positive and has just giving birth to a baby girl.

Answer 1

Yes an hiv patient can give birth to a healthy baby but certain precautions have to be taken.

In general, babies born to mothers who have HIV have a 25% to 30% chance of being infected with HIV. Your sister's baby can get HIV several ways: during pregnancy, during labor and delivery, or during breast feeding. Most babies get infected with HIV during labor and delivery. There may be less of a chance of passing HIV to your baby if you have a cesarean delivery (a C-section). Talk about this with your doctor.

Babies keep the mother's antibodies until they can make their own, which happens between 6 and 18 months of age.

If the baby isn't infected, he or she will lose the mother's antibodies and start to test negative for HIV sometime between 6 and 18 months of age.

If the baby is infected with HIV, he or she will still lose the mother's antibodies, but the baby will start to make antibodies to HIV. The baby will test positive and continue to test positive for HIV.

Medicine can't totally protect your baby from getting HIV, but it can lower the chance that the baby will get the virus.

A medicine called zidovudine (brand name: Retrovir) can reduce the rate of passing HIV from mother to baby by two-thirds. Zidovudine slows the growth of the virus, so the baby's immune system (which helps fight germs and illness) can get stronger. The medicine is also called AZT.

Because HIV can be passed to the baby through breast milk, it's better to bottle feed your baby if you are infected with HIV. For more information call the National HIV/AIDS Treatment Information Service at 800-448-0440.

Hope this helps

Answer 2

Yes dont panic! Your lovely little neice will be fine. During labour HIV can only be passed on if baby was to have wound and therefore infected blood would pass to baby. Baby's are very rarely born with a wound and in the unlikely event that was the case, babies are given an antidote. If the medical staff were aware of your sister being positive, then they will have given this to your neice at the time. Hope both mum and baby are well and you all enjoy the new addition to your family.

Answer 3

When a HIV +ve mother gives birth, the baby is almost always positive. However in something up to 80% of cases this is due to maternal antibodies crossing the placenta. The virus itself has not crossed in these cases, so if an antigen test is done (as opposed to an antibody test) it will be negative and the baby is perfectly well.

Answer 4

Absolutely.... there are medications that doctors can give now days to help a woman with HIV to have a healthy baby. But of course it all depends on the mother, how far along her pregnancy is and how long she has had HIV. My advice to anyone with HIV is to check with your healthcare provider or a gynecologist before getting pregnant.

Answer 5

Yes, but a baby cannot be declared HIV free until the age of 18 - 24 months, so there is going to be an anxious wait...;

Answer 6

i heard that they can have a healthy baby, as long as she was being treated for hiv with the right medication while pregnant.

Answer 7

Yes as long as the doctors know the baby can be born without being infected

Answer 8

yes they can, oddly enough the children born to women HIV positive can actually overcome the disease and eventually test negative for the virus.

Answer 9

yes its possible for the baby to be hiv free
good luck :-)

Answer 10

Yes. Totally possible.

Hope that's the case here x