Third trimester potentially ate undercooked chicken

[minnieot]

I have really bad perinatal anxiety anyway and have been avoiding eating out because I don't trust anywhere to cook properly but my family all booked a birthday meal for me tonight so I reluctantly went and chose a chicken burger as I thought they are hard to get wrong. The burger looked quite overcooked on the outside, very dark and crispy and dry. When I took a bite, I noticed it was very veiny which put me off but I didn't want to cause a scene so I cut the burger in half to try eat some from the middle. After eating a few bites and noticing more veins, I also noticed that the meat was very pink looking. Everybody else at the table assured me it seemed to be dry so it's unlikely it was undercooked but the fact that it was bright pink has made me so paranoid and I'm so worried it's going to harm my baby if it was undercooked :(

Did it have seasoning on it? That can make the meat look pinker than usual (and make the outside look very dark after cooking).

Texturally it is extremely unlikely that if the chicken was dry that it was undercooked. Raw chicken is almost jellylike, whereas cooked chicken is tougher, drier and stringier.

I had a similar experience in my first pregnancy, the chicken had been cooked using a thermometer (so at a temp of 80 degrees, but the chicken still looked pink to me. I was about half way through when I saw it, didn’t eat the rest but was absolutely fine.

If it's not breast meat it can look a bit pink. Thigh is often pinkish. I am sure you will be fine x

It was breaded chicken, no seasoning. Just so paranoid x