When I was pregnant with my son I was a child-minder and I came, I realised that one of the children that I was child-minding had something, the common name is slapped cheek where children have very bright red cheeks and it's, it's a virus but, and it's not particularly harmful to children but I found out myself that it's harmful to pregnant women. When I went to the doctors the, just for a bit of reassurance, the doctor actually had never heard [laughing] of this slapped cheek, which I'd found out about myself. So she contacted somebody else and found out and - very borderline but they, they tested me for it anyway and discovered that I had had this, they called slapped cheek which is, I think the proper name is parvovirus. So I had to be monitored, initially every 3 days I had to have my baby scanned, growth scans because, apparently, if the baby contracts the illness it could cause severe anaemia which can affect the growth. And the worst case scenario, obviously the worst case scenario is that you'd lose the baby, I think that's very rare. But beside from that, what may have happened was I may have had to have a blood transfusion through my womb, which was actually really frightening, the thought of that possibly happening. But as it turned out, I, they, they scanned me for quite a long time at the end of the pregnancy and the baby was fine. But that, that was worrying, the thought of having surgery through the womb was a frightening thing.
So you did have the virus?
I did, I had the virus but it didn't seem to have been passed on to the baby. |
