Am I being silly? Feel scared !!

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In my family there is a big history or heart problems. My grandad died of a heart attack in his early 40s and my dad has always had heart problems and has had 'mini-heart attacks' all 3 children including myself were born with murmurs, nothing out of the ordinary but as a baby mine was apparently 'quite bad' and I could regulate my temperature and stayed in hospital for a while. I still have the murmur.

At about 15/16 I developed very painful chest pains like stabbing so went to the doctors and told it was stress related tietze syndrome. This has never gone and does occur when I am emotionally stressed although not physically and I have always been active without issues. I had my son at 17 on a normal birth unit but now that I have said id like to go to a midwife only unit (no strong pain relief/doctors) they have sent me to a consultant who has decided due to my murmur she would like an ECHO heart scan done.

This was about a week ago and I've had air of shaky-fainting episodes and now have developed strong what I believe to be heart palpitations, my heart jumps and it feels as if it's beating out of my chest, I feel sick and short of breath it's quite scary. Unfortunately my car is in the garage so today I walked DS to school and then to the midwives this was about 8 miles in total I did today. I felt very sick on two occasions and had to sit down mid-walk and also at the school. The midwife has checked me over said all of my levels are some of the best she has seen such as my iron levels are excellent and she checked my BP whilst I was feeling like this and BP levels were perfect. She says this is to do with my heart and the pregnancy is putting strain on my heart. She said this very blasé. And told me to wait for my ECHO and to also book GP. But tonight the palpitations are very bad im alone with DS and to be quite honest I feel petrified that something awful is going to happen, it doesn't matter how regularly I eat, how much water I drink this sick-faint-right chest feeling also still happens. GP appointment will probably be a while as it's not triage and in the meantime I'm walking DS to and from school for the next week, I'm terrified I'll pass out whilst he's with me.

I'm only 17 weeks. If my heart apparently can't cope already then is it going to just get worse? Has anyone had any issues like this whilst pregnant I could really do with some reassurance.

Thanks in advance.

So, your anxiety is probably not helping but I can see why you are, 1) ring the gp and get an emergency appt - that much anxiety on its own should be good enough 2) come up with another plan other than walking ds to school. Can you take a taxi at least one way? Can your partner or someone else do it? Seems to me that you need to rest, and see your gp ASAP.

Yes probably and I am having a particularly bad time. Ok I shall try and get an emergency appointment tomorrow. There is no family nearby or anyone that can help out as they also have children to get to school and I don't know any of the mums at DSs school. I may consider a taxi, it's £7 a trip though and I need to travel to and from school and to the doctors which is 1.5 miles in the opposite direction. Cars just cost me £400 so I'm just a bit stuck.

Thanks for your reply, I hope the GP can help but I'm not too sure what they will recommend as the heart scan has already been referred however could take 1-2 months! But maybe they will be able to reassure me at least. My heart is thumping away and I'm only sat watching telly !!

They might be able to reassure you that it's anxiety, or, if they are genuinely concerned, they may be able to get the scan done sooner. I know the taxis are expensive, but perhaps at least do it until you've seen the dr - then you can breathe and tell yourself that you aren't at immediate risk. Make sure you tell the dr how much activity you're doing too. You know, you could even call ds in sick one or two days - I wouldn't normally say that but you sound so stuck and worried, one or two days off school of you can't get a taxi and it's just while the car is being fixed isn't the end of the world. Good luck with the appt