Pregnant with herpes

[Courtney25]

hi guys,

i have herpes now for 6 years. during my first pregnancy i had a handful of outbreaks in the beginning but they luckily stopped and i was able to have a vaginal birth. this is my second pregnancy now and its different. i had no outbreaks until i turned 27 weeks. i got an outbreak that went and then a couple days later another would pop up and so on. im now freaking out. why is this happening? should i push for a c section? im going on antivirals from 36 weeks but what if they dont stop me getting outbreaks? anybody have any advice? all the feelings i had when first diagnosed have come flooding Back

X

[Courtney25]

Anybody?

[Galen70]

Going on to suppressive therapy should prevent outbreaks from happening. Its safe in pregnancy. Remember you had a previous successful pregnancy and delivery. I hope you have had the chance to visit this website : herpes.org.uk/ which has lots of useful information. Using acyclovir greatly reduces the chance of viral shedding , but its not 100% guaranteed I'm afraid - but you had your last delivery without it so adding it in would hopefully make any chance of recurrence or viral shedding extremely small. If you are very anxious, perhaps getting some supportive counselling through the health advisor team at your local sexual health would be useful.

[saj01]

Bless you... I feel for you.

I see you've had a very constructive reponse already which is great. As it's you're second time... are you feeling more stressed out, tired and a bit run down compared to before... if so, that doesn't help as you know. The other thing you might want to bear in mind is there are certain foods, like nuts & seeds which contain high levels of arginine.. an amino acid which is known to promote the virus, whereas lysine, also an amino acid, can fight it.

there's lists of foods on the net which contain both and say how much of each, which you might find useful. needless to say I go easy on the nuts & seeds now . I've have herpes since I was in my 20's and I'm nearly 70 and I still get outbreaks. My gp was very sympathetic when I asked for 5% lidocaine cream as I couldn't buy it without a prescription. It has a slight numbing effect on the sores.

Like you, I and I'm sure everyone else who has this virus... beats themselves up continually.... sadly it doesn't change anything... try not to worry about something that may not happen re the suppressive therapy.

take care, hope it all goes well for you. x

[Courtney25]

Thank you for your replies. I have a 1 year old so maybe this time round I don’t have as much time to look after myself as I did the first time. It’s not the labour that scares me that much, I’m just concerned why I’m suddenly getting back to back outbreaks. One will go and then a few days later another one will appear. I feel like I’ve gone back to the first year of being diagnosed. Sajo1 how are your outbreaks these days? Do you go a long time without having one? X

[Galen70 in reply to Courtney25]

Perhaps because you are now carrying a pregnancy while being the busy mother of a young child ? The combination of the two might be enough to cause more episodes . remember also its sometimes difficult to identify if its HSV - candida ( which is also very common in pregnancy ) can cause itching and even sometimes fissuring ( broken skin ). If youre not sure, then you could safely have a test at a sexual health service.

[imbn]

You can always decide for a c section closer to the birth moment most probably? I also have herpes and I would be as anxious as you are, however there's as much as you can control and try and enjoy your pregnancy first and foremost everything will be okay, and congratulations!