Pregnancy

[sandra2013]

Hey everybody,

Me and my husband are trying to get pregnant. We're both pos and not on meds yet. I would like to hear your stories about how things went... like could you get pregnant the "normal" way, or did you had to follow an other procedure?
How did the pregnancy go? We have an appointment with our doctor in 2 weeks.

Thanks!

[Ann]

Hi Sandra, welcome to the forums.

You can get pregnant the "old fashioned way". You're both poz, so there's no need to worry about infection between the two of you.

The main question is "when will you start meds?" - before conception or after. Unless you have a very low CD4 count (under 350), you can usually wait until the beginning of the second trimester. If your CD4 counts were high (over 500) before starting meds for the pregnancy, some women can stop taking the meds after delivery.

These are things you will have to discuss with your doctor, but in the meantime, it will help if you become knowledgeable so you can have more informed discussions with your doctor. 

Please see page 17 of the European treatment guidelines in this PDF file: http://www.europeanaidsclinicalsociety.org/images/stories/EACS-Pdf/EacsGuidelines-v6.1-2edition.pdf

The UK based organisation i-base has an excellent section on women's health and pregnancy. The UK guidelines are pretty much identical to the European guidelines. The bonus is that they go into more detail than the PDF file linked to above.

http://i-base.info/guides/pregnancy

While you're on the i-base site, I highly recommend looking around. They have a lot of really good information.

Good luck with the baby-making! Please keep us posted.

Hugs,
Ann
xxx

[sandra2013]

Hi Ann,

Thank you so much for your reply, the sites are very informative, especially the i-base site has a lot of usefull information (not just pregnancy-based).
What I keep reading is the risk of reinfection when both partners are positive and that some doctors would reccommand an other way of getting pregnant. How about this risk, is this something that we need to keep in mind?

[Ann]

Reinfection is rare. There have only been a handful of documented cases and each time it involved a person who was very newly infected in the first place, and had unprotected sex with another person who had a drug-resistant strain, before their body had learned to deal with their first infection.

I wouldn't worry about reinfection if I were you. My poz partner and I have never used condoms and it hasn't been a problem, not even when he was on meds and I wasn't.

In my opinion, reinfection is nothing more than a bogeyman that some doctors use against us - doctors who don't like to think of hiv positive people having sex lives at all, particularly ones that don't include condoms. I doubt very much you'd ever have an hiv positive doctor using reinfection as a scare tactic like some doctors do.

I'm glad to hear you found the links useful. I hope you stick around the forums - there's a lot to be learned here too.

Hugs,
Ann
xxx

[sandra2013]

I spoke to my nurse, and she wasn't sure if we need to use other methods trying to get pregnant... she did advise to use protection when not trying to get pregnant, because of the possible risk of reinfection. We have an appointment with our doctor next week, so we will see what he has to say on things.
It just seems as every doctor/nurse has their own view on things.... from what I've read I just dont think there's a big risk of reinfection in our situation...

Huggs
Sandra

[Ann]

You're right, Sandra. The risk of reinfection is extremely minimal. As I said to you earlier, there's only been a handful of proven cases of reinfection, and they all occurred when the reinfected person had a very new (first month or so) first infection.

If you or your husband were the source of the other's virus (you acquired his virus, or he acquired your virus), then there's even less reason you should worry about this.

Even if you didn't acquire the other's virus, if neither of you have a drug-resistant strain, there's nothing to be reinfected with. Nothing that will make the slightest difference to either of you.

You should both have been tested for drug-resistance by now, even if you're not on meds yet. The drug-resistance tests are normally run early on in your hiv care, and it should be in your medical records. Check with your doctor about this. If you both have not already been tested for drug-resistance, have it done. If there is no drug-resistance, there is no problem.

Most health care professionals who insist on cautioning people about reinfection tend to be people who don't like to even think about hiv positive people having sex lives, or sex lives without condoms. They're the new Puritans.

There's no way I'd ever consider using condoms with my poz partner, unless he became infected with some other STI. And if that happens, he's got a lot more to worry about than using condoms with me.

Keep us posted!

Hugs,
Ann

[msoftie]

re-infectioin - my doc says "drop of water in the ocean"... makes sense.  positive or no, sperm is not 'infected' - it won't make a baby infected - hiv shows up in sperm, but if you are + then it's a no brainer.  I had a pos hubby and I was pos - and it was like "let's make a baby!"  fun fun.  you are in a good situation - no worries, you are not alone

[TabooPrincess]

I got pregnant the 'old fashioned' way (by accident!!) neither of us on meds and now I have a happy healthy 4 year old and I'm in good shape myself (have a look at my stats below).  Good luck!  Oh, it's an old post - are you pregnant now? xx