Women Who Brought Zika Fears Home With Them

In December, Ami Levy and her husband, Jason, left frigid Washington, D.C., for a two-week vacation in Argentina. Once there, they headed north to the Brazilian border for a couple of days, lured by Igauzu Falls.

She recalls the excitement when their phones’ GPS indicated they finally were in Brazil, and the awe-inspiring walls of water, some more than 24 stories tall.

And, she remembers, everywhere there were mosquitoes, leaving bites on her thigh.

Back home the first week of January, Ms. Levy learned she was four weeks pregnant.

Her first pregnancy had ended in miscarriage in September, so it was with some hesitation that she left for another trip, this time to Puerto Rico for a rendezvous with her aunt and sister.

As soon as she arrived, local news broadcasts began warning pregnant women about the dangers of infection with the Zika virus, carried by mosquitoes and suspected of causing devastating birth defects in infants born to infected women.

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She booked the first available flight home.

“I was on the beach for a few hours and didn’t put on any bug spray,” said Ms. Levy, a 35-year-old psychotherapist. “I had two bites when I got home Sunday.”

“I think I would have been more panicky if I hadn’t told myself I needed to keep it together for my baby.”

The Zika virus is not yet known to be circulating in the continental United States. But already, fear of the infection has come home for many pregnant women and their families who journeyed abroad before the risks were known.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that nine pregnant women were known to have become infected while traveling. Yet many more are coping with the possibility of exposure, reaching out to their doctors for blood tests and ultrasounds, obsessing on news coverage and trying to manage their worry.

The C.D.C. recommends that pregnant women receive blood tests two to 12 weeks after travel to an affected area to detect whether they may have been infected with the Zika virus.

Those who may have been exposed are urged to consider having extra ultrasounds to look for birth defects in the developing fetus.

Nothing is guaranteed; the antibody test has its limits. Ultrasounds often do not detect fetal microcephaly, the disease causing misshapen heads and brain damage that has been linked to infection with the virus.

According to the C.D.C., the scans are most accurate at the end of the second trimester or early in the third.

“The risk is small, but the effects are tragic,” said Craig Forest, 37, an associate professor of bioengineering at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.