If You Are HIV Positive, Should You Have a Baby?

For many couples, the desire to have a baby is often overwhelming. But when one parent is HIV positive, the need to protect the child becomes an overwhelming concern as well.

So, you can just imagine the struggles or sufferings of these couples to reconcile the desire for motherhood in relation to being HIV positive.

Motherhood

Five years ago, I had a colleague who was HIV positive but she still insisted on getting pregnant. During one of our coffee breaks, she related to me the torment she had to endure when received the news that she was HIV positive, especially in relation to her lifelong dreams of having a baby one day.

If You Are HIV Positive, Should You Have a Baby?

Everything was thrown out of the window, so to speak and getting pregnant was put in the back burner because she was told that the longest she could live was for another 12 years. But eventually, the thoughts about having a baby crept back and she begun asking questions like - are there people with HIV and yet have normal HIV-negative babies?

The thought that she may passed on the HIV to her kid was there, of course but after combing information over cyberspace, she knew that there was a two per cent chance that her baby may turn up to be healthy and HIV-negative. So, she was all for taking that risk.

But her neighbours, relatives and friends were literally against it. They basically all have the same message for her. 'What if you really die in 12 years time, what is going to happen to your kid?'; 'What if you kid is also HIV-positive, how is he and your family going to deal with this new burden?' 'How are you going to explain to your child that you knew very well from the start that the chances of him/her (kid) having HIV was very great?'

Those psychological assaults were very hurting, of course, and she reflected upon it for a long time. She finally made the decision to have a baby by using the argument that normal healthy folks also have risks in that they may give birth to children with birth defects and nobody can guarantee a perfect baby no matter the health status of the parents.

Hence, she reckoned what she was doing was not a selfish one and took the plunge by working very closely with her doctors.

So how did the story end for her. Well, the baby turned out okay, free of HIV, but my ex-colleague is now in a financially and physically bad shape, having to go for treatment and all.

But till this day, she still held on to the belief that what she did was not an irresponsible action but rather an informed choice.

If You Are HIV Positive, Should You Have a Baby?

Hannah writes on a wide variety of issues relating to personal relationships and family. Her latest work covers maternity health insurance and health insurance for pregnant women.

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