Protecting and ensuring the mother’s health
Your own health and your own treatment are the most important things to consider to ensure a healthy baby.
This cannot be stressed enough.
Sometimes medical research can forget the fact that HIV positive pregnant women are people who need care for their own HIV infection.
This can sometimes be neglected or forgotten by mothers and healthcare workers when the baby’s health is the main focus. You should not forget this, though: your health and care are very important.
Overall, your treatment should be largely the same as if you were not pregnant.
Prevention of transmission and the health of your baby have a direct link to your own care.
Prenatal counselling for HIV positive woman should always include:
- Advice and discussion about how to prevent mother to child transmission.
- Information about treating the mother’s own HIV now.
- Information about treating the mother’s HIV in the future.
Your child is certainly going to want you to be well and healthy as he or she grows up. And you will want to be able to watch him or her go to school and become an adult.
Nothing is more important to a child than the health of its mother.