Question
Can an HIV positive man still have children?
24 March 2007. Related: All topics, Pregnancy.
Can an HIV positive man still have children? If so, what is the risk to mother and child?
Answer
Thanks for your question which is very easy to answer.
The simple answer is a definite “yes” as being on modern HIV treatment also protects your partner.
As long as viral load is undetectable, the risk of transmission becomes zero. This means that your partner will not be at risk and the baby will be negative too.
The risk of a baby having HIV is only directly related to the HIV status of the mother, not the father.
So if your partner is also HIV positive, this is how you can have an HIV negative baby.
The i-Base guide to HIV, Pregnancy and Women’s Health includes a chapter on planning pregnancies and is available online or in print.
Note: This answer was last updated in January 2018 from an original post from March 2007.
my name is nkoetse my husband he is hiv+ he is on treatment since from 2009 and am hiv- we try to have a baby in normal way because we cant afford sperm wash. please help me, for sending the pregnancy study guide
Hi Avishek, have you had a look at our pregnancy guide pages about this? As the question above explains it is possible for a couple where the man is HIV+ and has an undetectable viral load to try and conceive naturally through timed unprotected sex. It’s a good idea to get a doctor’s advice about this but you can read this page about why being undetectable reduces the risk of transmission, and this page about the best time to try to conceive, for more information. Please do let me know if you have questions after reading those pages.
i am a HIV+ person male, & last 5 yr my viral load is less detectble,my wife is normal, we need a baby in normal process, without infected my wife , please guide me?
Thank You !
Hi Jimmy,
Please see this page in our pregnancy guide and let me know if you have any questions afterwards.
i have four kids with my wife , she has always tested for hiv during pregnancy and the results are negative. Am hiv positive ,i suspect i got the virus 14 years ago before i met her because since then i have not had sex with any other person apart from her. Am on ART treatment my CD 4 count rose from 325 to 530 and still going on with the treatment. Am therefore considering sex without condoms as am on ART treatment in order to have a baby .Your advise please
It is usually a shock when one partner gets a positive test result and the other is negative. If your confirmation test in a few months is also negative, then you have been lucky. You can still have a baby together, but the safest way to do this is for your partner to be on HIV treatment. It will probably take you both a while to come to terms with HIV and to learn about your options. During this time you will need to use condoms to make sure you stay HIV negative. There is lots of information on this site about how to have a baby when your partner is positive and you are negative.
http://i-base.info/qa/faqs-on-having-a-baby
i resently found out my bf is HIV positive n we havent been usin protection bt i tested negative n we trying 2 have a baby is it possible that i remain negative
Dear So Scared,
Your husband should have straight with you from the beginning but we won’t get into that. My husband of 13 years is HIV positive and has been since 2004. Thankful he has been undetectable since 2006 and is doing amazingly well. I am negative for the virus. For the last could of years we have been unsucessfully trying to conceive by having sex and I am still negative. It’s a chance we take but with him taking his cocktail of medications as prescribed he remains undetectable and his “T” cell count is almost as high as a person who is negative for the virus. Rest assure that you and your baby are fine. I would suggest to get tested every 6months for your own piece of mind. As for your baby, have the baby tested once and that’s it. The baby doesn’t need any more testing cause he is not at risk for exposure. I hope this helps
Hello,
Thank-you for your email. I’m very sorry to hear how worried you are and I can understand that this must have been very shocking to you.
First off- if you are HIV negative then your baby will be negative. HIV can not pass from father to child, only from the mother. So if you are negative your baby will be too.
Secondly, if your husband has an undetectable viral load then this makes it much less likely that he would pass HIV to you. An undetectable viral load means that there is very little HIV in the body, and this means that it is much harder to transmit the virus. Studies in the last few years have described the risk of transmitting HIV between a heterosexual couple where the HIV positive person is undetectable as being close to zero. This is backed up by something called the Swiss Statement – see this i-Base factseet.
If you were infected you would not have an undetectable viral load- this is only the case in people on treatment for HIV. But even with an undetectable viral load you would still test positive for HIV because tests look for the body’s reaction to HIV- not for the virus itself. Please see our guide to testing and transmission for more info on this.
From what you have told me it is almost certain that you and your baby are both HIV negative. It also sounds like you would benefit from getting some support to deal with this. Do you have anybody who can support you to come to terms with this shock?
I need some help… I just found out my husband of 2years is HIV postive and we have a 6 month old baby… I was obviously test during the initial pregnancy visit and again half way through and have been HIV negative, I just took an in home HIV test which also said negative. Through talking with my husband he said he is “undetectable” and has been since 2007 (when HE found out he was positive) So I need to know if he can have a child that is HIV negative?? If I have been negative for the the last 15months will I develop the virus too?? If his viral load is undetectable does that mean that his virus in me will be undetectable too?? I’m sorry for carrying on but I have just been hit with a ton of bricks and I’m mentally spinning out of control…. Please any help you could offer would be GREATLY appreciated :,-(