Question
My baby is on nevirapine and I’m breastfeeding, is my baby positive?
19 August 2016. Related: All topics, Pregnancy.
Answer
Firstly, congratulations on having your baby.
It is normal for your baby to be given a short course (4 weeks) of HIV treatment (such as nevirapine) when born. This doesn’t mean your baby is HIV positive. This will be checked later through testing. A different type of testing is also used on babies as the normal antibody test used in adults will show the baby as positive.
Our guide on pregnancy has lots more information
https://i-base.info/guides/pregnancy
In the UK, the BHIVA (British HIV Association) guidelines recommend bottle feeding.
This is because in countries where mothers can have access to to formula milk AND clean water ANDÂ bottle sterilising equipment, the risk of transmitting HIV to the baby through bottle feeding is zero. There are different recommendations for other countries though and many women breastfeed. I am not sure about the recommendations in Zambia.
This means that you are doing the best that you can to protect your baby.
However, being positive and looking after a new born baby can be hard and many people need help. Do you have much support around you to help or are you touch with good care from your doctor?
Hi Gcinile,
How old is your baby, and are you breastfeeding, or bottle feeding with formula? The best thing to do is talk to your baby’s doctor about this. It’s a good idea to tell the doctor all about the reasons why you need to give your baby gripe water and baba suur.
Please don’t worry too much. But talking to the doctor or nurse can help you decide what’s best for your baby.
My baby is on neviripine and i have been given him muthi wenyoni ,gripe water and baba suur i am worried now
Hi Zanny.
Are you now exclusively using formula. Its not possible for me to say what your child’s status is going to be, this is why its important to test.
Hello
I want to ask, my baby is 10 weeks and I am HIV+ . I have been breastfeeding and due to me unable to produce enough milk, I have introduced her to mix feeding. My viral load results still show undetactable ..they hv drawn blood for six week, now I am worried that my child might be infectected due to mix feeding that I did occassionally..please help.
Hi Amanda,
As long as you don’t mix feed, then changing to formula isn’t a problem. In a lot of countries its actually the prefered way to feed a baby.
If you are HIV positive and you are breastfeeding and you decide to use formula when your baby is 4 weeks old what are the risk of your baby in this situation
Hi Zusiphe,
As long as you aren’t breastfeeding, then yes this is normal.
Iam Hiv positive mother then the doctor told me to stop nevaripin after six weeks after they have done pcr is that ok?
Hi Nelly,
Thanks for clarifying this. Ilvitrim is an antibiotic, its not an ARV. I don’t know if there could be any possible interaction between the ilvitrim and the muthi as we don’t have research on this. My advice, though this isn’t scientific is to say that you don’t want your child to have the muthi, however this is something that only you can decide.
Well its something got to do with their culture to give their kids that muthi for a period of a month, so im just worried if the muthi wont flush the ilvitrim suspension in her body, or maybe disturb the work of ilvitrim in the childs body? thsts what im just worried about