no boys allowed in the room!!!!

this is the kind of situation that new-skool social workers would approach from a "strengths-based" perspective, focusing on strengths, resources, any and all positives that your friend can draw on (like you!) instead of getting blinded by the obvious negatives.

This is kool, thanks.

i went through a similar thing with a friend very recently and it was hella stressful for me (which of course made me feel like a selfish asshole)
i'm still trying to slog through it honestly, among 500 other things
being stressed out suuuuuucks

also rox i'm glad you have some answers -- i can totally see how that would be reassuring

(which of course made me feel like a selfish asshole)

Yes!

Part of me is like why is this stressing me out so much but I feel really uneasy about the entire thing. Also, I'm still pretty stressed out these days generally speaking which I'm sure isn't helping how I'm dealing with this but I just keep telling myself to just be there and listen and hope for the best etc. I pretty excited to go down and see her next week as I haven't in a while and I know she's looking forward to it too. There's a chance I might see her family though and I hope it doesn't all get too dramatic.

side note - I was looking at cards to get her and found one that killed me that said "Congratulations on your new huge boobs" but then I worried that she might not think it was that funny or be insulted because somehow cause he kind of already has enormous boobs so I got a different one and then the next day she texts me a picture of herself that says "my boobs are huge!" and I was like DAMMIT!

This is kind of like being supportive when your friend is marrying someone terrible but you're not sure they can be dissuaded, only more so: eventually there's going to be another person and another relationship to worry about (with the spouse/offspring) so you have to look long-term. (Only in the case of offspring obv the offspring is innocent and not terrible.)

my way of dealing with it was to try not to absorb the stress/responsibility of comforting and just be there in a practical sense and supportive/positive about the future.

Woo if she's already comparing the fetus to fruit, her mind is made up.

Well, I just got a text with the ultrasound pic (those things are wild, huh?) and a follow-up message that the baby d is walking 2 miles home because he stormed out of the car and decided to "act ghetto". Whoo boy.

Wow, this is stir-ry. I wish your friend the very best, and all the joys... I hope her man shapes up or she ends it clean, but whatever happens
hell idk what I'm trying to say
best to her, anyway, and to you. 'be supportive/positive' = excellent friendship approach.

I'm having to give myself quite a bit of self-coaching on KIP while visiting my brother and his wife. Their marriage is so incredibly WTF to me, but what can I do? Not much.

am i the only one who immediately thought of her probably now being infected with HIV and possibly with a future infected child? That just seems massively irresponsible.

and cruel to purposefully bring a kid into the world with that kind of burden on their shoulders.

actually, that was my question too: is the fact the babby daddy is HIV + gonna have serious effects on the kid's health?

I mean, if she got pregnant, they aren't using protection. Soooo... yeah, i mean, isn't she HIV+ now???

No.

Heterosexual sex isn't actually a very effective means of transmitting HIV. I'm not gonna quote statistics that I can't remember exactly here but basically a serodiscordant couple (one +, one not) can have unprotected sex (PIV) every day for an entire year and the negative partner still won't even necessarily catch HIV. Like I said, I can't remember the % but it's way higher than you'd think (that the one partner would remain -). Now that's an unmedicated HIV+ person. ART has had a huge huge huge impact the transmission of the virus. If a + person is on ART and has an undetectable viral load (meaning the number of copies of the virus in their blood) then risk of transmission during heterosexual sex to the negative partner is effectively 0%. As far as I understand it that is the case with said person. He is on ART and his viral load is undetectable.

(also this all might not be 100% correct but it's the general idea)

So as long as the medication remains effective and he stays undetectable they could conceivably have unprotected sex forever and she'd never get it. However there are certain things called viral spikes that could put her at increased but still low risk. Now - the medicine could stop working - some people become resistant to certain ART and they stop working but there's every chance that he might be able to stay on it forever. Also, mother-to-child transmission doesn't happen in utero but during the actual birth process so if she did become + during the pregnancy then what they'd do is towards the very end they'd put her on prophylactic ART and do a C-Section to avoid this. By doing that mother-to-child transmission has virtually been eliminated in the US/Europe.

I was scarred during the 90's AIDS awareness campaigns and thought I'd get HIV really easily without using a condom.

sorry I wrote that out all really fast so it might not all make sense but I gotta catch my bus will re-read later to see if it does

x-post - of course you were - so was I! We had the living shit scared out of us. Oh I have so many thoughts on this. Later!

but basically that's simply not true and you're way way way more likely to get a zillion other things first statistically speaking.

That made clear sense to me. I knew some of that about hetero transmission rates, but didn't know that they had taken care of mother-to-child transmission. Good news, everyone!

ENBB I am v. interested in your thoughts on that issue.

(also nb there are things that make what I just said untrue like presence of open lesions and/or vaginal tears or time of the month and general health just saying that so nobody jumps down my throat)

i will not jump down your throat because of open lesions

Here's a little on the m-t-c thing: http://www.cdc.gov/globalaids/global-hiv-aids-at-cdc/eliminating-hiv-infections.html

"Without diagnosis and treatment, about 35% of HIV-infected pregnant women will transmit HIV to their infants. Key interventions, including those listed in the right column, have reduced mother-to-child transmission in the United States to <1% (CDC, 2007), in Botswana to 3.6% (Tlale J, 2008), and in South Africa to 3.5% (MRC South Africa, 2011) in infants 4-8 weeks of age."

Though that doesn't say anything about the vaginal v. c-section thing. hmmm. I swear I read that. Will have to look later. CA - Will def write more!

That's fantastic. I love when we humans get things right re: medical advances.

well, that definitely makes this having a kid thing seem way less controversial to me. I mean, it's dumb, but not hand-on-head-wtf level that I was at

yeah, there are seriously only a handful of babies born HIV positive in the US anymore, and it pretty much only happens when there is no prenatal care.

Take a look at this handy chart of transmission statistics from the CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/statistics/basics/

Male-to-male sexual contact is still, by far, how most HIV pos folks contract the virus. Women, it would seem, are twice as likely to contract HIV from hetero sex than men are.

(click on Diagnoses of HIV Infection, by Transmission Category)

Which *I think* has to do with the way het sex works like women are exposed to more fluids as the receptive partner and the vag is one big mucous membrane and more susceptible to tears etc than the penis. I'm sure there are other factors too but I think those are big ones.

Btw that was why I listed HIV Last because out of all the shit going on here it's actually maybe the least concerning in the immediate future. Except for how it will effect him and her (and baby) emotionally directly and indirectly etc. it was just another level. Also they have been dating 4 mos! So much to take on.

yes, re: first post. Same thing goes for receptive buttsecks, though, too.
However: she could totally still turn up HIV+. She's only been banging this dude for 4 mos. How motivated is this stoner without a job to stay on his meds?

Yep. That's a very good point and one of the things that worries me. There's always a risk esp if he doesn't adhere to meds etc.

Also, this story just got worse.

:/

oh no, what happened? twins?

I hope it's not twins.

No, thank God but he gave her the clap. She found out today after the ultrasound.

jesus fuck

I've been on the phone for the last two hours. She's devastated and now considering termination. Interestingly it looks like there are only 3 clinics on all of LI that perform surgical abortions. I guess that's not that surprising though considering that when I last volunteered at an fp clinic here I think there were only 5 in the entire state of MA.

Oh that is terrible! I hope she kicks that dude in the nuts and never speaks to him again.

What do you tell someone when they're hysterical and asking why God is punishing them? It's so sad. Somehow, "idk but sometimes really shitty things happen to good people" isn't really cutting it.

and now considering termination.

Oh shit. Late, but 1. obviously nothing your friend decides to do is going to be wrong, but 2. can't help but think that if she has the baby it's going to be easier and more fun on her own, with family/friends' support, and 3. I just learnt a whole bunch about HIV transmission - thank you!

What do you tell someone when they're hysterical and asking why God is punishing them?

i'm trying to remember what we said when i did pregnancy counseling, but all i can remember saying is that pregnancy is just a bio fact that can be perceived/dealt with in myriad ways, and its not healthy to view it as a punishment or reward. idk. im sorry youre having that stress. i get so clammed up in situations like that

roxymuzak, I knew a guy who had connective tissue disease and managed it really well through diet and a change of lifestyle. I don't know the details or if he was on meds.

ENBB: wow, reading about this just made me tear up for the future child in this world. Is the mother HIV+?

Got my period for the 3rd month in a row at 27 days. Woohoo, feel like I'm getting somewhere, but ugh! I broke out with the worse case of acne in my life. It all seemed to subside once I got my period and is starting to rapidly disappear. I was also so irritable I wanted to crawl out of my skin, the day it started and 2nd day, yesterday, everything made me cry. I fucking hate this! I'm 42 and I feel fucking 14.

I don't want to keep seeing gyns or ob-gyns because it seems like this is the sort of thing no one is going to really explore. What the last gyn said sounded like a reasonable explanation. Only one way to find out and it is to kick August off the boob but she's way more emotionally attached to it than my friend's babies were...it's complicated.

the mom is not HIV+, and apparently has great odds of staying that way, as does the baby. There's a (really informative, for me!) discussion of this upthread.

Glad things are evening out with your periods, even if you have to live through some annoying effects while things settle down.

Yeah, what Ljub said. So long story short she found out a bunch more really horrendous shit the other afternoon, he left her and she terminated the pregnancy yesterday. Just a really fucking sad situation. Hopefully she can start to heal from this whole thing now. Still going down there next weekend.

wow, poor woman. I know we are probably thinking overall it's for the best but who'd want to be in that situation. Sounds like she really wanted to be a mum, too. GL ENBB

Got a call from the gyn today, three weeks after pap. Test results came in and it was all weird and somewhat bad news. I wish I could go into more detail and get input, advise and opinions but unfortunately, too private to discuss on here. I wish there was a real room with you all in it right now.