If your partner has herpes, and you think that you do not, avoid all sexual intercourse or oral genital sex during the last 12 weeks of pregnancy. Your physician should examine you during labor as if you had genital herpes, in order to make sure that a sore is not present. Some physicians will want to assess the pregnant woman's risk of acquiring primary infection by doing a Western blot on her. However, careful observation for lesions by the patient and the physician, along with virus cultures, will most often allow a person with genital herpes to have a normal delivery, as long as the herpes is not active at the time.
Newborn herpes is a very RARE disease, while genital herpes is a very common disease.
Generally, virus shedding in recurrences is on the external genitals and is present in fairly low amounts. Because of immunity and other factors even if viral shedding is present, most babies will not actually get a disease from the mother with recurrent herpes. Therefore, the overall risk for a mother with recurrent herpes to give birth to a baby with neonatal herpes is only about 1 in several thousands, as long as she and her physician are aware of the infection and looking out for active lesions at the time. Because of this, true primary infection during any period of pregnancy can actually pose a serious risk to the fetus. If this pregnant woman acquires herpes for the first time during pregnancy, the doctor should be informed, since depending upon the various factors, a treatment may be required and special follow-up may be in order to try to prevent neonatal herpes from occurring.