CMV and Congenital CMV: Part 2
CCenter for Inclusive Child CareFeb 27, 2024 at 6:06 pm16min
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00:02Narrator
Welcome to iInclusion Matters, a podcast about children's development from the Center for Inclusive Child Care.
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00:20Priscilla
Welcome to Inclusion Matters a podcast from the Center for Inclusive Child Care. I'm Priscilla Weigel, the Executive Director and I'm back again for part two of our conversation with the folks that are experts on something called CMV. And I'm joined by Gina Liverseed from the Minnesota Department of Health. She's the CMV, nurse specialist. And we're also here with Amanda Devereaux, who is Program Director of the National CMV Foundation. And so since this is a two part series, Amanda, can you just kind of catch up our listeners who maybe didn't fully get the first part, but just tell folks an overview of information about what is CMV?
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01:00Amanda
Sure, yes, so CMV Cytomegalovirus is a very common virus that most people will get in their lifetime, most of the time, they won't even know that they had it, because it resolves on its own. And the symptoms can be pretty mild. However, it can be particularly dangerous for those who are pregnant because they can pass it to their baby. And when a baby is infected before birth, that is called Congenital CMV. And it's actually the most common virus that infants are born with. And it's the most common infectious cause of birth defects. So it can be very serious. And so that's why it's important. And again, it's it's something that's pretty common.
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01:40Priscilla
Yeah. And in part one you talked about truly, it's, it can be quite a spectrum of how it plays out in a childs system. And so I think that just getting more information out there to folks is so important, and especially how, how is the support? What does the support look like to families who maybe do have a child with that diagnosis?
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02:04Amanda
Yea, this can be a really challenging diagnosis for families. And I guess I would start by just normalizing that, because families aren't going to know about this, they're not going to have heard of it before, they're not going to get an exact roadmap of this is exactly what your child is going to look like. So there's a lot of unknown and a lot of things that are going to be up in the air. So we definitely understand that this is a challenging diagnosis for families. So we at the National CMD foundation want to provide support. We we connect families with other families in their area, we answer questions, we try and help people find CMD experts, if they're not getting, you know, the medical care that they're really looking for, we try and do all those things. We also refer to other disability and, you know, hearing difference organizations, you know, Hands and Voices being a great example, other disability organizations, the National Center for Deaf and Blindness, things like that, that can also provide some support, that isn't necessarily CMV specific, but can be very, very related to the symptoms that they can see in their children. So we definitely try to connect people with the resources that they need.
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03:15Priscilla
That's so important. And I love to that you connect them with other families who have are going through the same process. That's, I think that when you're going through something that is scary and unknown, and because you can't give a clear, this is how it's going to play out. It can be really daunting, and it's easy to pull kind of into yourself, but you're giving the folks an opportunity to really build social connections with folks who are going through it. So that's so important and so helpful. I'm sure they appreciate that. And the wonderful resource of your national organization. And I think to just to toot Minnesota's horn again, in our earlier episode, we talked about the fact that Minnesota is really on the forefront of getting the word out more about this. And Gina, can you just toot the horn of Minnesota Department of Health and the process that's that's happening here in Minnesota, about CMV.
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