Pregnancy and viral respiratory infection
The definition of viral respiratory infection: is a contagious disease that can affect the respiratory tract, these diseases are such as flu and other known cold infections, other examples are, chickenpox, fifth disease, Cytomegalovirus and rubella, when pregnant women have contact to other people with such diseases, they may catch it. However, pregnant women might not get the disease and if she had it is probably not harmful on her baby accept for some types than can cause miscarriage or defects to the baby when giving birth.
So if the pregnant woman suspected any type of infection from these diseases she might have to consider telling her doctor who will investigate this issue and ask few questions about the type of contact with that ill person.
Effects of chickenpox
Chickenpox is considered a serious illness for pregnant women, especially if they weren't infected with it before as it can do birth defects to the baby, but if you had the disease before you would unlikely to have it again, so in case you are not sure about it you may tell your doctor and he will run some testes on your blood to make sure that you have the immunity, in case it turned out you are not immune, there are some medicines that you can take to prevent it from becoming dangerous and possibly help protect your baby from chickenpox.
Effects of fifth disease
Fifth disease is a disease that usually affect children and develop a rash on the body, it can affect also the adults as half of them are exposed to this disease and may catch it from children, the symptom of fifth disease that occur on children is the slapped or pinched face, but adults usually have very sore joints.
when pregnant women get infected early in pregnancy, they may will have a miscarriage, and can cause birth defects to the baby such as severe anemia, so pregnant women should consult their doctor to make sure they are immune.
Effects of cytomegalovirus
The bad thing about cytomegalovirus is that it doesn't show any symptoms when occur on the person, that's why it's hard to know about the infection, and unfortunately it's most common to pass from the mother to her baby, usually this disease affect 1 pregnant woman out of 100, and it's known that it may cause bad birth defects such as hearing loss, development disabilities or even death of the fetus.
This disease is considered dangerous and it highly affect women who work in day care centers and in a health care setting, so you should consult your doctor right away if you suspect being infected with disease.
