When Nicole and Shane Sifrit welcomed their daughter, Mariana, into the world on July 1, they never thought something as normal as a kiss would leave their baby girl fighting for her life.
Nicole Sifrit
Just a week after she was born, the couple noticed one day that Mariana was not eating and would not wake up.
“Within two hours,” Nicole said, “she had quit breathing, and all her organs just started to fail.”
The couple rushed their week-old daughter to Blank Children’s Hospital in Des Moines, Iowa, where doctors confirmed the infant had contracted meningitis HSV-1. The infection is caused by the herpes virus—the same one that causes cold sores.
Yesterday morning, Nicole posted the following update to Facebook.
Otherwise known as the kissing disease, Herpes meningitis can be spread through either casual contact, sexual contact or from a mother to her baby during childbirth.
According to the World Health Organization, 2 in every 3 people under the age of 50 have HSV-1. It’s commonly known as oral herpes and presents itself in the form of cold sores. That means that 3.7 billion people—more than half of the world’s population—is walking around with a (currently) incurable virus. And many don’t even know they have it.
Different from genital herpes (HSV-2), HSV-1 can be transmitted through sexual activity, but can also be contracted through the swapping of spit in some capacity—like a family member kissing Mariana on the lips—or even just skin-to-skin contact where a carrier sheds skin cells containing the virus and they come in contact with an opening in another’s skin.
In Mariana’s case, she caught the herpes virus, and then developed viral meningitis from it.
Nicole Sifrit
Both Nicole and Shane tested negative for the HSV-1 virus, and suggested it came from others who visited or had contact with the child in her first few days.