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Summary
If you have HIV/AIDS and find out you are pregnant or think you may be pregnant, you should let your health care provider know as soon as possible. Some HIV/AIDS medicines may harm your baby. Your health care provider may want you to take different medicines or change the doses.
It is also possible to give HIV to your baby. This is most likely to happen around the time you give birth. For this reason, treatment during this time is very important for protecting your baby from infection. Several treatments may prevent the virus from spreading from you to your baby. Your health care provider can recommend the best one for you.
Your baby will also need to have treatment for at least the first six weeks of life. Regular testing will be needed to find out if your baby is infected.
Related Issues
- Having Children (AIDS.gov)
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Preventing Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV during Childbirth
(AIDSinfo)
Also in Spanish
Videos and Tutorials
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Preventing the Spread of HIV - Mother-to-Child
(Healthy Roads Media)
Statistics and Research
- HIV among Pregnant Women, Infants, and Children (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Clinical Trials
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ClinicalTrials.gov: HIV/AIDS and Pregnancy (National Institutes of Health)
Journal ArticlesReferences and abstracts from MEDLINE/PubMed (National Library of Medicine)
Reference Desk
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AIDSinfo Glossary (AIDSinfo)
Also in Spanish
Find an Expert
- AIDS.gov
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AIDSinfo (Department of Health and Human Services)
Also in Spanish
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Also in Spanish
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NIAID Division of AIDS (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
Children
- Children and HIV (AIDS.gov)
- Children and HIV (New Mexico AIDS Education and Training Center) Also in Spanish
