Human immunodeficiency virus -- HIV -- or AIDS is a communicable, chronic condition that suppresses your immune system, often leading to death or severe debilitation due to the inability to fight off other infections and diseases. If you have or your partner has HIV or AIDS, your family planning strategies may require special medical procedures. Talk with your doctor about your family-planning options in light of HIV.
Significance
HIV is transmitted in several different ways, mainly through sexual contact but also through contact with HIV-infected blood, MayoClinic.com says. Children can contract HIV from the infected mother during pregnancy. HIV and AIDS deaths have steadily decreased and life-expectancy has increased, notes the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. But HIV is still one of the most dangerous sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in existence and has no cure.
Prevention/Solution
The best way to prevent an HIV infection is to abstain from any contact with other people's semen, vaginal secretions and blood, MayoClinic.com says. During any sexual contact with another person, you should use a new condom and/or dental dam. If you have HIV/AIDS, you should inform your sexual partners prior to sex and seek immediate care if you become pregnant. Male and female condoms are the best protection against contracting HIV and for family-planning purposes in preventing pregnancy, notes the University of Maryland Medical Center.
Considerations
If either you or your partner has HIV and you want to begin a family, you have several options that can prevent passing on the HIV infection to your non-infected partner or to the baby. Of course, you can explore options like adoption, but you have other options for having your own biological child. If the man in the heterosexual relationship is HIV-positive and the woman isn't, you can try a "sperm washing" procedure that involves artificial insemination of the man's "cleansed" sperm, says the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
If the woman is HIV-positive and the man is negative, you can also try artificial insemination with the man's sperm, minus the "sperm washing" technique. Your doctor can prescribe certain medications to help reduce the chances that the baby will become infected with HIV. In fact, receiving special drug treatments during pregnancy can reduce your risks of passing on HIV to your baby by up to two-thirds, MayoClinic.com notes.
Misconceptions
You may think that if both you and your partner have HIV, you won't have any dangers of infecting one another during unprotected sexual acts. But this is not necessarily true. If both partners are HIV-positive, unprotected sex to become pregnant may still be unsafe due to the different strains of HIV, so artificial insemination with "sperm washing" may be the safest option, says the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Warning
For up to six months after contracting HIV, the virus may not show up in a blood test, so you should always practice safe sex using condoms, warns the University of Michigan Health System. Use polyurethane or latex condoms to protect yourself against HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, including while having anal or vaginal intercourse and oral sex.
In addition to the risks of conceiving a child when one partner is HIV-positive, also consider the complications of raising a child. Before deciding to conceive, consider how one parent's illness and HIV-related complications will affect parenting decisions, as well as who could become a guardian for the child in the event that the HIV-positive parent becomes too ill to care for the child or dies, advises the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
