Swelihle
Swelihle lives in a shared house with three other women and four other children. Her partner comes to help her sometimes. She was diagnosed with HIV in 2018 while pregnant with her older child and started treatment late into her pregnancy.
Swelihle is Black African and has a partner and two children, a two-year-old child and a five-month-old baby.
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Swelihle says that the early days after diagnosis were very difficult and she spent most of them crying and praying and finding out more information about HIV. She hates taking the HIV medication because the tablets are so big and hard to swallow, and she needs to drink a jug of water just to swallow them – if injections became available, in the future, she says she wouldn’t mind trying as an alternative. Swelihle told her partner two months after finding out she had HIV, and he was the first person she told. He was very nice about it and comforted her. Her partner also took a test and found out that he too had HIV.
As she had been diagnosed during pregnancy, and her viral load was still high at the time, Swelihle had to give birth to her older child by caesarean section. She was also told she couldn’t breastfeed because of the higher risk of HIV transmission. She says she would have loved to have breastfed, and felt angry with herself that she couldn’t, but wanted to do everything to ensure her child was free of HIV. Swelihle says if she had been told her levels were undetectable, she would have breastfed. However, even with her new baby, she opted to formula feed because she found it easier. She also responded to the advice from healthcare staff that it was the best way to avoid all risk of transmitting HIV.
Swelihle gets her baby’s formula feed from an organisation, and they will supply it until the baby is one year old. She received it immediately after leaving hospital and it was delivered to their house. Swelihle receives nappies as well, and she says it would be a struggle if they had not received this support.
Swelihle says some friends and other people have asked her why she is not breastfeeding her baby. In particular, a lady she was staying with seemed quite persistent and angry about it, and so Swelihle had to lie and tell her that she was formula feeding because the baby refused to breastfeed.
The lockdown periods over the Covid-19 pandemic were isolating and difficult, especially being stuck at home with a toddler and a baby. Overall, Swelihle feels she was treated well by healthcare staff, and she said, “they made everything easy, they were just there for me.”
Swelihle initially found her diagnosis difficult to come to terms with.
Swelihle initially found her diagnosis difficult to come to terms with.
I found out 2018, late, late I think when I was about six months and then I started the treatment then. At first, I was I wouldn’t say I was in denial, I was just I don’t know how I can say this but, you know, when you just wanna ignore everything and just carry on with life.
Swelihle preferred to use formula to avoid waking up at night for feeds.
Swelihle preferred to use formula to avoid waking up at night for feeds.
Not getting up at night, I didn’t not want to wake up at night. I just want to sleep. So, if I breastfeed the baby would be there milking all the time, just how I am. Feeding isn’t giving me much of a problem, I bottle feed her. If she’s full she just sleeps the whole night.