My daughter was born with congenital CMV. I live in the U.S. and I had never heard of CMV before my pregnancy, nor had any of my friends or family who had normal pregnancies.
Throughout my entire pregnancy, doctors and nurses could see there was something wrong in my ultrasounds but could not tell me what it was until around my 35th week of pregnancy. My baby’s spleen and liver were enlarged, and she also had 4 noticeable cysts on her brain. Going through all of this with no knowledge of CMV was terrifying. I was lucky enough to have a doctor that wanted to test for it, otherwise I could have lost my child completely. I was transferred to a different doctor in a much larger and experienced hospital facility in Tampa, Florida. The day I transferred to this new branch, they noticed on the ultrasound that my baby’s heart rate was higher than normal, I ended up delivering by C-section that day. She was only a week and a half early but had to stay in the NICU for three week because her lungs weren’t fully developed and knew she had complications from CMV. The day she was born, an infectious disease doctor spoke to me about treating her for CMV, I said absolutely yes.
My daughter is 8 months old and is still being treated for the virus. She is meeting all of her developmental milestones and continues to grow normally. The cysts on her brain do not appear to be affecting her development at all, and that is coming from a pediatric neurologist. She does have mild hearing loss in one ear, and will continue to be monitored because with CMV hearing loss can develop over time. But I strongly believe that without this treatment, she wouldn’t be doing as well as she is. This was my first and only pregnancy and I strongly suggest that every woman who is entering motherhood should ask about this virus to their doctor, ask to be tested, ask about prevention. and don’t take it lightly. I don’t want any new mother to ever have to go through what I went through. If Iwould have had the knowledge of this virus prior, and known more about it, I don’t think it would have been as terrifying as it was. My daughter is extremely lucky to be doing as well as she is and to have the doctors she has. This virus causes all sorts of severe problems in babies and I believe there should be more done about it, or at least more known about it.