
Trying for a baby	Pregnant	Birth & labour	Baby	Toddler

Herpes during pregnancy

For women who have genital herpes, (the worry of passing on a herpes infection onto their baby is understandable, but it is not as likely as you might at first think. Most women who have this condition go on to have perfectly normal pregnancies and labours.

The risk of you passing the virus on to your baby comes if you have an active infection during your pregnancy. If this herpes attack is not your first ever attack, then according to NHS information, your baby still only has an 8% chance of being infected, because of the immunity you will both have had time to acquire. So if your herpes infection predates your pregnancy, the risk to your baby is fairly minimal.

If you have your first ever attack of herpes during the early stages of pregnancy, you will be given antiviral drugs to clear up the infection. The biggest risk of passing the infection to your baby comes if you have a herpes attack during the last six weeks of pregnancy.

In these late stages, the baby will have up to a 50% chance of being affected. Again, you will be given antiviral drugs and will probably need to have a caesarean section in order to make certain the baby does not come into contact with the sores that are signs of active infection. A tiny percentage (about 1 in 100,000) of babies will develop neonatal herpes, which may damage the skin, brain and eyes of the newborn.

Symptoms of genital herpes
Genital herpes is spread through sexual intercourse with an infected person. The symptoms of a first time genital herpes outbreak may feel like flu. You may have fevers, chills, muscle aches and headaches. Small bumps on your vaginal area develop into blisters, which burst open into painful sores. The whole area can feel itchy and inflamed and you may have vaginal discharge and pain when you urinate.

There is no cure. The virus lives dormant in your body and for some people, they rarely get attacks, while for others, they experience them more frequently. The first attack can last for a few weeks, but subsequent attacks are usually less painful and get gradually less severe as your body builds up immunity.

If you are planning a pregnancy, or have recently discovered that you are pregnant, and have genital herpes, you must talk to your GP, so that your pregnancy can be carefully monitored. Read our feature on Sexually transmitted diseases for more information.