Gestation, in general, emotionally influences in women’s life and, more intensively, when it’s associated to a compromising clinical situation of the child’s health, as in the possibility of a HIV vertical transmission. In this context, the current study aimed the investigation of the subjective meanings of the pregnant women who carry the HIV and that have been subjected to actions to prevent the vertical transmission. For that, a transversal, descriptive and exploratory - with a qualitative approach - investigation was used. In that investigation, according to the saturation of the content, 12 pregnant women participated. The results demonstrated that the pregnant women have difficulty to adhere the antiretroviral medications, reluctancy to accept the possible indication of a c-section and frustration, fulfilled with feelings of guilt due o the impossibility of breastfeeding their child. It was observed, therefore, the necessity of socio-emotional support actions that must be developed by the health professionals, mainly the psychologists, in order to cope with vertical transmission.
psychological aspects; pregnancy; HIV; infectious disease transmission vertical