Thanks again to all- so helpful and so wonderful to find a community of thoughtful, pragmatic, vibrant people living with herpes, since that's what we're all trying to be and do, right?
I am actually a neuroscientist by training and a university professor and have been scouring the literature about viral shedding to see what it is we know and do not know. I'm noting that there does not seem to be a clear answer out there now (that I've turned up so far, but this is a fairly recent re-entry into exploring this for me) about the relationship between time since initial OB (I know mine was within 3 days of infection- long sad story) and rate/amount/days per month of likely asymptomatic shedding for HSV2. I'd love any references folks have that are recent about this-
I have always known when I was "going to get a twerpy" as my ex and I used to refer to it- I did have prodromal prickling, but as I mentioned, the last episode I had was when I had my daughter 12 years ago, which was terrible, btw. May as well share- might be helpful to folks.
Had been put on Acyclovir to prepare for my 2nd vaginal delivery (no probs with my son), but I mounted an extreme fever (105- they never figured out why) late in my pregnancy and they induced me- we both almost died. She was delivered vaginally, but, horror of horrors, less than 24 hours later, in the maternity unit, I discovered a small lesion. You can imagine my terror. They tested her, and unfortunately, her eyes tested positive for HSV2 (prior to this I had not had an outbreak for probably 3 years prior to this. She was admitted to the NICU, they did a spinal tap, screwed it up and had to do it again, and happily, she was fine, but was in the NICU for 6 days (over Mother's day). It was terrible- talk about having problems establishing breastfeeding. The happy ending is that she was/is fine and now that she is older (and her older brother too) it has given me a chance to add that to "the talk" about sexual responsibility and the long-term effects of STDs- just that they need to be careful and frankly less trusting than I was years ago.