U.K. mom Claire Henderson took to Facebook to warn other parents about an unlikely danger facing newborns -- a simple kiss from a well-meaning visitor. The moral of the story is DO NOT let anyone kiss your newborns mouth, even if they don't look like they have a cold sore- 85% of the population carry the virus. "Please share this with every new mum and pregnant woman you know," she wrote on Facebook. "Before 3 months old, a baby cannot fight the herpes virus. If a baby contracts this it can cause liver and brain damage and lead to death." With them, she explained how a person with no visible signs of cold sores gave them to her baby Brooke by getting close to her. Parenting it is imperative that parents "limit the number of people who visit and handle your baby for the first few months, and remind them not to kiss the baby's face, especially on the lips," in order to prevent cases like Brooke's from happening. "I know this sounds like I am scaremongering," she wrote, "but if my friend had not told me about this my baby girl could have been seriously ill." 
 
 Henderson went on to write that baby Brooke is now fine and that all of her tests "came back clear."
– The mother of a newborn in the UK is taking to Facebook to warn how easy it is to expose babies to herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1), which is the kind typically transmitted orally, and what caused her own infant to be put on a drip in the hospital as her body fought the infection. The source? A well-meaning hospital visitor who didn't even have visible cold sores and kissed baby Brooke on the lips. "Before 3 months old a baby cannot fight the herpes virus," Claire Henderson writes. "If a baby contracts this it can cause liver and brain damage and lead to death. I know this sounds like I am scaremongering, but if my friend had not told me about this my baby girl could have been very seriously ill." A doctor at the University of Pennsylvania tells CBS News that transmitting the virus this way is actually quite unusual, and that because "the contact person did not know they were having an outbreak of herpes ... there is virtually no way to prevent this rare event from happening." Still, one New York pediatrician tells Yahoo Parenting that parents can be proactive: "Limit the number of people who visit and handle your baby for the first few months, and remind them not to kiss the baby's face, especially on the lips." In 2008, a newborn with a cold sore died a week after symptoms disappeared, having been diagnosed with HSV-1, notes Cosmopolitan. As for Brooke, she was treated early, and "all her tests came back clear." (Here's another way babies are getting herpes.)