How To Feed Your Baby If You Have HIV

How should I feed my baby if I have HIV?

An HIV-positive mother should preferably use formula feeding in the Western world to prevent any chance of mother-to-child transmission from breast milk. However, in resource-limited settings, that is not generally the advice. Because to feed a baby with formula food made up with an uncertain water supply, an unsafe water supply, would mean many more deaths from gastroenteritis in infants than would come about from breast transmission of HIV. So the recommendation in resource-limited settings, the third world, is that mothers do breastfeed their children. However, it's interesting that if mothers breastfeed and formula-feed, or give the baby food as well, that increases the chance of transmission. It doesn't decrease it. We believe the reason is because when babies get foreign food and foreign protein, there's inflammation set up in their bowel, which means it's more likely that any virus in the breast milk will infect them. So, if mothers who are HIV-positive are breastfeeding, they should exclusively breastfeed. The baby shouldn't receive anything other than their breast milk until they stop, and then they should receive only food and not any breast milk.