Rhesus factor

If you have a Rh-incompatibility problem in your family, , you should ask the doctor to help you figure out how this will affect your situation. Below are the most general information on this very complex problem.

In most people, the Rh factor is positive;the minority has a negative. If the husband and wife of the Rh factor is the same( positive or negative) or if the wife is positive, and her husband is negative, no difficulties arise.

But if the husband's Rh factor is positive, and his wife is negative, difficulties are possible. In this situation( in the US this happens in about one marriage out of eight), some children will inherit a positive Rh factor from their father. If a child with a positive Rh factor grows in the mother's uterus, which has a negative Rh factor, a little blood of the baby can penetrate the mother's blood through the placenta, especially during childbirth. The mother's body can develop protective antibodies that destroy foreign blood - just like each of us develop antibodies that kill measles bacteria, if they enter the body again. But if the mother's body produces antibodies against the positive Rhesus cells of the baby, these antibodies through the placenta enter the bloodstream of the baby and begin to destroy blood cells there. If many blood cells are destroyed, the child soon becomes anemic after birth, and the substance formed from the destroyed blood cells causes jaundice.

During the birth of the first child, the mother's body does not have time to create antibodies or transmit them to the child's body so that they destroy blood cells, but with each new baby the sensitivity of the mother to positive blood cells becomes higher. Therefore, every following for the first child can expect difficulties. However, if mothers did a blood transfusion with a positive Rh factor, antibodies might appear before the birth of the first child.

It is important to remember that only one marriage of eight is between a man with a positive and a woman with a negative Rh factor, but in such marriages there is only one chance out of twenty that the child will be in serious jeopardy. In other words, it is rather an exception than a rule.