Sick of checking everything I eat and worrying

[StephyRose]

Hi all,

I'm 16 weeks with baby #1 and since I found out I was pregnant I've done my best to steer clear of anything I'm not supposed to eat. Despite this, if I have eaten something and discovered an ingredient it has made me panic extensively after e.g. Honey and Mustard Salad dressing is made with White Wine Vinegar and it sounds ridiculous now but being that I've had a previous MMC, everything makes me worry. I didnt even eat a Pasta sauce the other day that was made up of 2% soft cheese just to be on the safe side (I couldn't be sure it was pasteurised).

THEN today, feeling a little peckish at lunchtime I go into the fridge and get a pack of pre-chopped supermarket melon from the fridge. Being ultra curious and give the fact that I Google everything, I typed in "Melon and pregnancy" and so many articles came up about how dangerous Cantaloupe melon is and that it can carry listeria. Bloody melon!!

Is nothing effing sacred or safe?!?!

I have read works like miscarriage and stillbirth and now I am really worried.

Any one spare five mins to talk me down from the ceiling? Pregnancy has just made me a ball of anxiety from start up until now.

None of those things are a problem! Vinegar is fine! The pasta sauce is cooked, so pasteurisation isn't relevant. Melon is not something the NHS advise you to avoid. Honestly, stop googling, stop reading the labels so closely and just stick with whatever's on the NHS list. You're doing fine and you're going to be fine.

Please just follow the NHS advice if you're in the UK. Advice is different in other countries as they have different food standards and checks. Googling things brings up advice and hearsay from the whole world which is not relevant to you and will just make you anxious.
You must be super stressed trying to do your best here, but I really think the NHS stuff is really good and clear on this.

Deep breaths OP, it's a nervy and confusing time and of course you want to do your best for the baby, but there is no way you have harmed your baby by eating some melon. The only things which have conclusively been shown to be really harmful to foetuses are alcohol and fags, and even then plenty of people partake in those things and their babies are fine. Bear in mind also that a lot of the advice you get from Dr.Google is international and/or based on evidence from countries with very different food standards to the UK, e.g. a lot of the prohibition on cured/deli meat is based on countries where salami etc is basically served raw whereas in the UK it is properly cooked/cured and low risk for bacteria. Chilled fresh fruit in the UK which has been properly stored would be very very low risk for listeria.

The UK/NHS guidance is pretty much based on risk management, not on preventing there being any possibility of harm or on forbidding things which are directly harmful. i.e. the point is to (without stopping people living a normal life), helping them to minimise the already very small risk from bacteria that can cause complications - things like unpasteurised cheese and raw fish will absolutely not definitely harm you or baby, most people who eat it will be fine, it's more like if you eat it there is a small chance you'll get ill, and then of the very small numbers of people who get ill, a small number of those will have complications - and yet because you hear much more from/notice the minority who had the bad consequence and not the people who were fine, we overestimate the risk. As humans we are really bad at judging risk generally (e.g. its far far more common to be in a car accident than in a plane crash, but it's way more common for people to be frightened of flying than driving - because flying is more of an unusual event whereas we drive so often we become desensitised. Plus plane crashes are front page news whereas most car crashes aren't even reported.

So as a good mum of course you are scared and trying to protect baby as much as possible, but try and relax, yes stick to the recommendations but don't stress about it and continue to eat a healthy, varied and satisfying diet which scruntising every little thing. It might help you to understand some of the science behind the recommendations to help you understand the risks a bit more, this is a good book? www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Food-Pregnancy-Prenatal-Nutrition/dp/0986295043?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

Pretty much any cheese you buy in a supermarket has been pasteurised. I would probably only ever bother double checking if I was buying some artisan cheese from a small producer in a fancy deli.

The image that you posted refers to the rind of melon, not the melon itself so with that you’re absolutely fine!
It can seem like a minefield sometimes but the risks involved, even with the things the NHS advise to avoid, are so minuscule, you really don’t need to worry.
There was a thread on here not so long ago on confessions; people having soft cheese, cured meats, glasses of wine, unlimited caffeine, etc. all things you’re supposed to avoid, all with no negative effects whatsoever.
Try to stay off google, and just follow the NHS advice. If you go looking for it, pretty much everything is a no-no according to someone!
You’ll be fine x

And yes white wine vinegar and cooked pasta sauce (even in the unlikely event the cheese in it started as unpasteurised) are of course fine! There's no alcohol in wine vinegar and any bugs in the cheese would be zapped by the cooking process...

Its such a horrible time isn't. Please find that post that PP said about 'confessions' it really did cheer me up and it may put a smile on your face too x

First of all stop googling. If you really feel the urge to then just stick to the NHS (if you're in the UK)
Secondly, ALL vinegar is a product derived from alcohol.
Thirdly, the chances of anything you eat causing a miscarriage is about as likely as it being caused you being stressed about it.
Lastly, unless you are going to live off multivitamins and distilled water for the remainder of your pregnancy then you should try to relax, stress doesnt do yourself or the baby any favours either, you've got 5 months left - enjoy it, it's a beautiful experience, dont let irrational worry ruin it

There’s really barely anything you can’t eat when you’re pregnant. I had a delicious baked Camembert yesterday. It was unpasteurised but safe because it was baked.

Thank you so much ladies ... all sound advice.

I am a natural worrier and my Mum has always said if I didn't have a worry, I'd buy one. So far in this pregnancy, my partner has looked at me like I've grown a new head so many times which the ridiculous things I have said. 🤣

From now on unless it's on the NHS website, I will assume it's fine. And we have pretty high standards of food hygiene and preservation in this country don't we?

I did read the Confessions thread and a lot of second and third time Mums saying their little ones were perfect, regardless of what they ate or drank. Which is good for me as I looooove fast food burgers. Made me feel a lot less anxious 😊

Thank you all again for your kindness and rationality ❤

I found it really hard to relax over these things in the early days, IVF pregnancy and previous miscarriage made my anxiety even worse. What I would say is I am still cautious but feel more calm about it -now 35 weeks. It def gets easier. Good luck and remember these guidelines are super super cautious -it’s such small risks even if you do mistakenly eat something but it sounds like you are taking lots of precautions so try not to worry.

Please try and stay calm - I completely understand your worrying as I'm exactly the same, a chronic worrier! It has always driven my parents and DH bonkers 😂 food is one of the things I'm managing not to worry about at all really, stick to the NHS guidance and enjoy your pregnancy as much as you can ❤️

My sympathies OP. My good anxiety never got better in any of my three pregnancies, partly because I read too much about it and stopped eating basically anything uncooked or which I hadn't taken out of the packet myself. Ironically in my third pregnancy I went to France at 33 weeks and ate a pizza I didn't notice had cured ham added after it came out of the oven. I was sick as a dog and terrified but it all turned out fine. Fwiw the issue with pasteurisation only applies to soft cheeses. You can eat parmesan even though it's never pasteurised, because listeria cannot grow in hard cheese. All the best. It's completely natural to worry, just don't forget to manage that - once they're born there are many more worries for many many years.

Wtf? Do you usually suffer from health anxiety as this is not normal.

All of those things are fine to have! Look on the nhs website for a list and only refer to that.

In my first pregnancy I had fresh eggs (not lion stamped), prosseco at a wedding, medium steak

It is liberating when you look at the nhs guidelines. During my second pregnancy I only stuck to this and ate exactly the same as before. You can eat eggs, smoked salmon, prawns, limited amount of caffeine. Stop worrying and only follow the nhs guidelines as there will be articles about any kinds of foods or activities off limits for pregnant women as people love to police pregnant women's bodies.

Thank you @mouse1234567, @bluebell94 @Tootletum and @geojojo, I am just being overly cautious and because this baby is long awaited, I guess I just get panicked should I feel that its threatened.

Err ... thanks @Mammyloveswine, I think? My every fear, anxiety and worry is completely eradicated now that you have pointed out it is not normal.

Some people worry, some people don't. Some people come across as rude, some people don't. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Bless you OP. These days there is along of fear mongering over pregnant women, most of it is well meaning but alot of the time people just love a good scare story!
I've never changed my eating habits in any pregnancy but my irrational fear is uncooked chicken, anything it touches/close to/or could have touched I have to then spray with dettol 30000 times before I'm sure there is no bacteria left - also that's when I'm not pregnant too!
So we all have our worries in some shape or form, no one should be rude about it or make you feel stupid.

All the best, enjoy the moments, it flies by then you've got the rest of your life to carry on worrying!

I’ve been pretty anxious throughout this pregnancy but it hasn’t tended to be too fixated on the food side of things. I’ve been cautious of course, but I’ve really tried to just stick to the nhs guidelines and not google anything else.

Early on I was drinking chamomile tea, I can’t remember why but I decided to google chamomile tea + pregnancy never for a second thinking there’d be any ‘hits’ about it being dangerous, and pages and pages of stuff came up implying it wasn’t safe - i got myself into a right tizz until I actually looked properly at what they were saying which was essentially ‘not enough studies have been done to say one way or the other’. I’m pretty sure that it my one cup of chamomile a day was actually enough to bring on a miscarriage there would have been stronger warnings everywhere. The most the nhs has to say is ‘no more than 4 cups of herbal tea a day’ and I was well within that.

I learned my lesson, I’m pretty sure if you googled any food/ drink + pregnancy you’d find articles saying it was bad or at very least advising caution. So I stopped googling. When, post chamomile tea incident, I was in a restaurant and having a complete brain fart and couldn’t remember whether I was allowed something or not I made sure to only look on the nhs page and nowhere else. It really does help. (I did switch to mint tea though, until about 20 weeks when I started to be able to stomach normal tea again).

I was the same after a miscarriage. I read Emily Oster- expecting better, and it's changed my whole perception and the way I am coping with pregnancy. It is very much worth you buying a copy 💜💙

I used to use the Ovia pregnancy app. It's free, has a food safety look-up and seems fairly comprehensive. You can just use the NHS one, but they tend to only advise you not to do something when there's enough scientific evidence to prove categorically that it's unsafe. I too am a worrier, so I used the app because it's got everything that scientists have suggested might be unsafe on it and I didn't want to take any chances.

FWIW, on the app neither cantaloupes or white wine vinegar are listed as unsafe.

@stephyrose ah I'm really sorry I didn't mean to appear rude, my post sent before I'd finished (two toddlers clambering on me!)

Anyway what I was going to finish by saying was you know you can trust the nhs, refer to the guidance there and only that and have a chat with your midwife.

Also remember that People often find out they're pregnant later on having drank, smoked, eaten pate, been on rollercoasters and babies are perfectly fine.

I've been through loss and it's worrying but I always tried to remember that the chances of a baby are 75% from that first positive test and each week the odds increase more and more.

Good luck ok, and stay off google!!

I didn't eat raw eggs and some cheeses and alcohol. A friend almost leapt across the table when I ate a peanut, but I ate it. Just use the guidelines, and then exercise some common sense.
By the way when I was pregnant I hosted a bunch of french women and asked about what food restrictions they had and they looked at me like I was crazy. I have since heard they are supposed to avoid raw food.

Anything that's cooked is fine OP. Don't drink, don't smoke and make sure everything you eat is cooked through. Love an ex food worrier!

@Pipandmum I had a French lady in my antenatal classes and she used to interrupt almost every piece of food hygiene advice with "that is not the case in France"