CMV warning: Kissing your firstborns while pregnant can damage your baby’s developing brain

Only one in six pregnant women have ever heard of CMV, but if they contract it by kissing a young child on the mouth or sharing drinks they can put their unborn child at risk of serious disabilities.

Only a tiny minority of pregnant women are aware that kissing their firstborn while pregnant with their second can put the unborn child at risk of serious disabilities.

The very common, but widely unknown congenital Cytomegalovirus or CMV, is one of the leading causes for birth defects in babies – yet just one in six pregnant women have ever heard of it.

Liz Farthing was 31 weeks pregnant with her second baby when an ultrasound showed an elevated rate of blood flow to her baby’s brain. After weeks of tests she was told she had contracted CMV, which had been passed onto her unborn baby.

“I blamed myself a lot, because I thought I could have been more careful about contracting something like that if I had known how detrimental it can be,” Ms Farthing said.

Royal Hospital for Women Maternal Foetal Medicine Specialist Dr Antonia Shand said roughly 80 per cent of adults will have been infected with CMV by the age of 40.

Liz Farthing contracted CMV and passed it onto her unborn daughter, but Flossy (pictured) is now one-year-old and continues to thrive. Picture: Tim Hunter

The virus is shared through infected body fluids like saliva and urine, but can be avoided by simply washing hands and not kissing babies on the mouth.

And while CMV is mostly harmless to most people with healthy immune systems, if caught during pregnancy the virus can damage a baby’s developing brain – potentially leading to physical, mental and developmental disabilities including hearing loss, epilepsy and cerebral palsy.

“Every day in Australia, a baby is born with a lifelong disability caused by congenital CMV,” Dr Shand said.

Liz Farthing, with husband Alex Cameron and children Flossy and Cali is warning other expectant mums about the dangers of CMV. Picture: Tim Hunter

Ms Farthing and her husband decided to continue their pregnancy – choosing to hope for the best.

Their daughter Florence was born at 36 weeks, and although she failed her newborn hearing test, Flossy has continued to thrive, passing further tests.

“When she first arrived my emotional walls were up because it had just been so traumatic,” Ms Farthing said.

“It was almost like I struggled to bond with her because I was just always waiting for

the worst news.

“But now that I’ve allowed myself to think that we might have a positive outcome, that maybe we got very lucky, the tests aren’t as stressful anymore.”

Ms Farthing said she was overwhelmed with pamphlets and information during the early stages of her pregnancy, but was never told that sharing a drink with her older son, or giving him a kiss on the lips could harm her unborn child.

Jennifer and James Kennedy with their son Jack. The Kennedy's lost a child to CMV.

“They are really easy things not to do so I wish I had known,” she said.

Jennifer Kennedy and her husband James were also unaware of CMV until abnormalities were detected during her 20-week scan.

It was discovered that at around three weeks gestation, Ms Kennedy had contracted CMV and it had passed through the placenta to her unborn baby.

Because it had impacted him in the early stages of pregnancy, his growth and development were severely affected, and Mr and Mrs Kennedy made the heartbreaking decision to terminate for medical reasons at 24 weeks.

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“It was a horrible decision, it was something we sat on for some time, because we knew that this was a decision that we were going to have to live with for the rest of our lives,” she said.

She delivered her tiny baby Harry in March, with the help of the same midwife who had been there when she delivered her first son.

While she and her husband grieve the loss of Harry, Ms Kennedy is determined to raise awareness about CMV, to try to prevent other families from experiencing the same pain.

“One baby every day is born with CMV, that is huge, why are we not talking about this more,” she said.

“If we talk about this, we could stop other people from having to go through this horrible experience.”

For more information on CMV, visit cerebralpalsy.org.au/cmv

Originally published as CMV warning: Kissing your firstborns while pregnant can damage your baby’s developing brain