Heart defects early pregnancy

[Blessedbymybabies]

Hi Atomic. I’m currently in my 2 ww about 10-11 dpo. I came across something recently and I’m very anxious now I feel like I’m going to freak out. . If you recall I lost my baby boy last year at 6 months because of major congenital heart malformations. He had several issues one of which was among the rarest defect. Criss cross heart. Why this happened still weighs on me as he had no chromosomal issues and no reason and there’s never a day I don’t pray that I can prevent it from happening again.

We are a healthy family and have absolutely no history of birth defects in our immediate family and no heart defects in any of our children (I have 13 healthy nieces and nephews between all my siblings and their spouses!) and 2 healthy of my own. I just now decided to look into heart defects in pregnancy again and I came across this article stating that high blood sugar in early pregnancy can cause heart defects, and not among mothers who had diabetes, but among normal health women. I am almost positive I am pregnant this month just waiting another day or so to start testing, I feel it as i know my body but I’ve tried to stick to the no breakfast and healthy eating of my diet but I absolutely have been craving sweets the past while with my 2 ww and just have had no control not too so ive just allowed myself it at night as a meal. But there were days I had alot Im so ashamed to say! I havnt had craving for sweets like this in a long time.

Now I am freaking that If I am pregnant I may have raised my blood sugar this 2 ww and caused an issue since the heart starts developing well before BFP. When I was pregnant with my son Who had defects, I had the most horrible sweet tooth and probably at my unhealthiest eating I had been. Right now I am healthy, 5 feet and weigh 112 lb and eating very well and have a great amount of vegetables in my diet but I’m so worried I did something to my baby if I am pregnant! I feel I have scared myself straight to not touch another sweet again if I’m pregnant. If this didnt happen to me before I probably would take it with a grain of salt but I FEEL Im clearly at risk of having that happen to me, even though they told me it was a stroke of bad luck. I cant buy that and I never did. Can you please take a look at this article and share your thoughts Atomic? Im scared this time around... Thank you

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2017/12/higher-blood-sugar-in-early-pregnancy-raises-babys-heart-risk.html https://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20171215/moms-blood-sugar-tied-to-babys-heart-defects-odds

[nuthinbutpink]

You are not going to eat your way to a birth defect. It is totally random and nothing you did caused it. EVERY mom with a child that has a syndrome or birth defect blames herself at some point. It is simply like being struck by lightning. You didn't do anything to raise the chance of a birth defect. It just happened. You can't eat a cookie and give your child a heart defect. Stress CAN raise your blood pressure and wreak havoc on the body. My advice is to chill out and assume lightning cannot strike twice in the same place.

[atomic sagebrush]

Sweets don't make you have high blood sugar. That is not how high blood sugar works. You can get high blood sugar and never eat sweets (and I"m happy to explain why this is if you'd like). There is NO reason to cut out reasonable amounts of sweets in pregnancy. High blood sugar occurs when some people's bodies do not work right and either don't release adequate insulin, or their body is "deaf" to the insulin. It is very unlikely that anyone who weighs 112 pounds has this issue because having high blood sugar also will make you gain a lot of weight and likely have other PCOS-type issues as a result.

I ate TONS of sweets with all my pregnancies. Indeed, during the first trimester, sweets are oftentimes all I can keep down. I drank pop daily, I put sugar in my coffee and tea, I also craved sugar and sweets and carbs with all my pregnancies (it seems to be how my body is "programmed" to be pregnant). If this was a thing, many, many more people than you would be affected by it. But it's a very very rare lighnting strike kind of event and nothing you did or didn't do.

I know it's so, so hard to be pregnant again when something has gone wrong in the past but nuthin is right that the more you stress, that's not good either. I would suggest stop Googling because there is always something to worry about - they do lots of studies but then later on they prove to be untrue and so I suspect you would always find something to worry over, and then most of them would prove not to even be true!

Huge (((Hugs)))).

[Blessedbymybabies]

Thank you thank you Atomic. I dont know why advice from you is always healing...I feel better about this now. I have to plead ignorance on this because I actually dont know much about how blood glucose works and I didnt know it doesnt work like that. I will stop googling, or try lol I just want this one to work out so so so badly, I dont know if I can lose a third. I keep telling myself, surely it just HAS to work out! It has too, it worked out twice before for me before the two I lost so why not now...every pregnancy throws about things that never happen before. It is so hard. Thank you so so much, great big hugs to you too <3

[atomic sagebrush]

Your blood sugar goes up whenever you eat (unless you eat 100% pure protein, which is not very common a meal to have) Some foods do make your blood sugar rise higher and faster but it is NOT only sweets that do this, many other foods will also cause your BS levels to rise. Even just getting up in the morning causes your blood sugar to go up! Then since your body doesn't like having high blood sugar, your body will release insulin to lower blood sugar. All this is perfectly normal and happens to everyone several times a day. the problem is for people who have a malfunctioning insulin response system, their blood sugar ends up staying high for longer than it should and that may be a problem. But it has nothing to do with a person eating some sweets and instead has to do with the malfunctioning in the insulin response system that is keeping the blood sugar up for longer than it should be.

RE Googling, the thing is, you can Google all you want and it doesn't prevent being struck by lightning. All it does is worry you day in and day out. People think it is helping them feel in control, but we have to accept that sometimes terrible things happen for no reason at all, just totally out of the blue like winning an awful, awful lottery and there is no preventing them. So you're making yourself upset trying to control something that is inherently uncontrollable, and the Googling only gives you more things to feel upset over, if that makes sense.