Cytomegalo virus during pregnancy?

sunny-d

I just got a call my doctor and she told me that my blood work came back positive for this virus and I am now considered a high risk pregnancy.  She said that I will have to go to a specialist for some more testing, but can anyone give more of an idea of what this will involve?  Searching on the internet does me little good as all it does is give me percents and possibilities.  So if anyone has or is going through this, I would appreciate some guidance and information.

sweetgirl425

I don't have experience with it personally, however I have looked into it some, b/c I'm a nurse, so my risk for exposure is higher! From what I understand a large percent of the population is positive for CMV. And that just means that you have been exposed at some point, so you have the antibodies in your blood. So the fact that you are positive may just mean that you have been exposed previously.

For the typical, healthy person CMV will just cause cold-like symptoms at the most, so you wouldn't really know that you were exposed. It's really only dangerous to immune-compromised people or pregnant women. If you are actually exposed to it while pregnant it can cause m/c or cause your baby to be really sick when born.

All that being said, you should really let your dr know you have more questions. I'm sure the testing they want to do is to try to determine whether or not you were exposed before or after you were pregnant.

Try not to stress too much!  And like I said call and talk to your dr, maybe she can ease some of your fears!

618mom22boys

DS1 was born with CMV.  But we got very very very lucky with it.  He ended up being in the NICU for 12 days, had to have a platelet transfusion and is deaf in his left ear with partial hearing loss in the right. 

It can cause no side affects to very sever side affects.  It just depends on if you contracted it while pregnant or not and if so how far along you were when you got it.

ETA: I am from the STL area!

Clotho!

so I've always been taught the the majority of the population is exposed to CMV before they are 2 and once you're exposed you will always have your blood show CMV+ maybe I got misinformation but that is what I've always heard. 

The red cross told dh something similar b/c he is CMV- and they always want his platelets. They often give them to young babies who need platelet transfers.

BTW I'm near the St. Louis area too.