I wanted to post my experience of a positive toxoplasmosis blood test during pregnancy so others can get the comfort I received eventually after a month of agonising over websites that reported nothing but worse case scenario outcomes.
Firstly, the facts: it's a common misconception that toxo is mostly caught from cats. Most cases actually come from eating undercooked meat, cured meat or salads or raw vegetables that have not been properly washed and contain traces of soil. Once you have had it you are immune and not at risk. However that said It's fairly rare in the uk, however, despite the fact that I was a neurotic eater, have no contacts with cats or gardening and live a sanitised life in central London, a blood test I opted to have at 14 weeks came back showing I had the antibodies that showed a recent infection. A second blood test two weeks later confirmed that I had somehow contracted this at 8 weeks. toxo does not necessarily present any symptoms in adults but IF it crosses the placenta to the foetus then the complications it can cause ranges from severe (miscarriage or brain damage) to mild (minor eyesight problems) and sometimes no damage at all. HOWEVER the risk of toxoplasmosis transferring across the placenta if you contract it during the first trimester is VERY SMALL but it increases in a linear fashion as a pregnancy progresses. However, the level of damage it potentially caused to a baby decreases in a similar linear fashion as a pregnancy progresses. So the outcome depends very much on when you contract it. If it doesn't cross the placenta then your baby is fine but you will need to take antibiotics (spiramycin) for the rest of your pregnancy. If it has crossed then you will take different antibiotics to treat the baby.
So what happens if you test Positive? You will need two blood tests to confirm when you contracted it. I was then recommended an early anomaly scan at 16 weeks to check for major damage. It is likely that if toxo crosses the placenta in the first trimester then the damage will be severe enough to be picked up on a scan and may even cause miscarriage. However, if your scan is normal and the baby is growing normally then in all likelihood you have NOT transmitted to the baby. Next step we were given the choice as to whether or not we wanted to know for sure by having an amniocentesis. We decided we would and the amazing professor Nicolaides did this for us at the Fetal Medicine Centre in London and reassured us that the likelihood of it having crossed to the baby given the timing of infection was only 0.5%. a fact I wish very much that someone had given me at the outset as hours of Internet research had me convinced we were going to lose our much wanted baby. After an agonising 10 day wait we were told toxo wasn't detected in the amniotic fluid, and so we could continue our pregnancy as normal provided I took mountains of antibiotics until birth. From the first blood test results it was a month before we got this certainty.
The entire experience was incredibly upsetting and stressful and I wish I had been able to read more stories of happy outcomes because the tone of information available online was overwhelmingly negative and my doctor seemed unwilling to give me a specific estimation of the risks which left me fearing the worst.
I hope this information will be helpful to someone now or in the future. I know the Nhs doesn't test for toxo as standard because it's rare and the results can be tricky to interpret with a high rate of incorrect outcomes first time round. I don't think anyone should panic if you aren't planning on having the test - if you follow the guidelines about what to eat and not to eat then statistically the risk is very low, i think i must have been incredibly unlucky. However my experience was so stressful that I would say that no rare steak is worth what we went through! Anyway, that's all, and if anyone is going through something similar pls get in touch and I'd be happy to lend some support. X