Millions of women give birth to babies every year and becoming a mother is an experience that transforms the lives of not only the mother and father, but also of all the family members connected to the expected baby.
The whole process of labor and childbirth is a beautiful, though painful experience, with not much surprise, apart from the gender of the baby (if you have opted to wait until birth). There are scopes of complications happening and most expectant mothers and doctors take every precaution necessary to ensure the baby is born normal and healthy.
But here is a story of a family, who were blessed with twin babies, but a devastating event happened to them. Though their twins were born healthy and happy, something was amiss and when doctors checked further, they were given a bad news. Read for yourself.
A family from Troy, New York has been spreading word about a deadly virus that affects babies during pregnancy and can cause some severe damage to the baby, as the family found out first hand. Michelle had given birth to a beautiful set of twins named Sophie and Lincoln some three years ago. The twin babies came into this world healthy and beautiful. But when the doctors conducted the usual tests on the babies to check their full development and if there are any issues, they found something disturbing with one of the babies and eventually the family came face to face with some bad news.
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When the babies are born, the doctors perform certain tests to ensure proper development has happened of the baby. Tests like Apgar score, weighing, circumference of the head, checking the temperature over a period of time are done to tick off a checklist for baby development.
During one such test, one of the twins that Michelle gave birth to, Sophie failed the routine hearing tests that the nurses perform in order to see whether there are any problems with the baby’s hearing and other cognitive functions. During one such test, Sophie didn’t react to the noise made near her ears and on further testing, it was revealed that Sophie was born deaf. After three years, Sophie has to use sign language to communicate, while her twin Lincoln is perfectly fine.
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This unfortunate anomaly happened to the baby when Michelle was pregnant with the twins and she contracted a particular virus that is common amongst pregnant ladies. This virus is known as the Cytomegalovirus or CMV. Unfortunately, the CMV is a hugely common virus and affects over 80% of adults at one point or another before we reach the age of 40.
This virus is hard to detect because it has no symptoms at all. But once you contract this virus and are cured of it, it won’t bother you again ever. The most common way this virus is spread is via bodily fluids like blood, saliva, urine, semen and even breast milk.
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Sophie was fortunate to be diagnosed early and can lead a normal life using sign language. But her parents are sharing her story so that every other parent who are trying to have a baby or even if they are not planning to have a baby, must know of this harmful virus and ask the doctors for compulsory hearing tests to be performed on the baby just after it is born.
Babies with CMV tend to have the following signs:
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Not all states in the US have compulsory CMV testing for babies and it was fortunate that Sophie was born in Utah, where the tests are compulsory and she was diagnosed early. Unfortunately, many babies do not undergo such tests and by the time the virus becomes active, it is already too late to do anything as the virus is incurable.