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.

Nothing is more important to a child than the health of its mother

Principles of care

Russian doll 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. Circumstances where this is not the case.

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; and
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

Principles of care

The mother should be able to make her own choices about how to manage the pregnancy. She should be able to choose her own treatment during the pregnancy.
Healthcare workers should provide information, education and counselling that is impartial, supportive and nonjudgemental.
HIV should be intensively monitored during pregnancy. This is particularly important as the time of delivery approaches.
Opportunistic infections should be treated appropriately.
Anti-HIV drugs should be used to reduce viral load to undetectable levels.
Mothers should be treated in the best way to protect them from developing resistance to HIV drugs.
Mothers should be able to make informed choices regarding how and when their babies will be born.

This is the web edition of the i-Base guide HIV, pregnancy & women's health. This guide is available in UK clinics. You can order free printed copies or download a PDF version (364 Kb). There are also several translations.

Information on this website is provided as a guide only. All treatment decisions should be taken in consultation with your doctor or other healthcare professional. Authors and credits. Full section index. Glossary.