just been gardening and now in a panic..

[AbbyTabby]

Hi

I am 21 weeks pregnant and have spent the morning gardening in short sleeves and flip flops - putting new top soil in garden, new plants, pulling out weeds, clearing rubbish. I was wearing gloves but realised after about an hour that I had lots of scratches on my forearms when they started stinging. Queue mass panic about toxiplasmosis and poisonous weeds. I came in and washed hands,feet and face in scalding hot water and then put savlon on the scratches, but am still completely paranoid. This is my second pregnancy and I would never have even thought about gardening in my first pregnancy as I was completely paranoid about everything but this time round I am trying to be a little more laid back -or thought I was until today..now I am sitting here thinking of all the awful things that could happen to the baby if I have got toxiplasmosis. I know neighbours cats use our garden as a toilet..they are in there all the time.

I think it's highly unlikely that you have toxiplasmosis, although I do remember having similar panics from time to time. I gardened all the time when I was pregnant with both of mine and didn't come to any harm. Hope this is reassuring.

I think you get toxoplasmosis from touching cat faeces/urine and then touching your mouth or eyes. If you wash your hands and arms well it should be fine - it's unlikely that you've a, broken the skin throughly enough to get it straight into your bloodstream, or b, been heavily exposed on your arms anyway (unless you've been up to your elbows in mud!).

I wouldn't worry about the scratched - I always get a lot gardening and they often sting, but it's more skin allergy than systemic poison! Fwiw, gardening gauntlets are very very good.

Scratches are bound to sting and they're probably plant based so don't panic. Unlikely that you'd have anything poisonous in your garden. Some plants are unpleasant but wouldn't harm your baby.

Thanks for all the words of reassurance. Have been gradually calming down all afternoon from the original freak out...I don't even know if I may be immune anyhow, if I had it in the past sometime, its difficult to know when we don't get tested as part of our pregnancy blood tests.

Hi Abby, the exact same thing happened to me a couple of months ago - spent two days gardening over the May bank holiday weekend, wanted to get lots of jobs done while I still could - was about 20 weeks then. I not only have a cat of my own but we have other cats pooing in our garden too. Have you got cats in the garden? Anyway I was sitting on the sofa on the Monday and looked at my arms and noticed scratches with soil embedded in them (I'd been very careful to wear gloves all the time but they didn't cover my arms). I had a massive freak out and was really really worried. So that week I looked into the tests you can have done.

Have you been reading up about toxoplasmosis and are you still worried? Because if you are I can let you know what to do re getting tested - its quite complicated and most GPs won't know the exact tests that are needed. (Mine didn't have a cloe and I had to tell him!)

But I will say that its extremely unlikely you've been infected, even if you do have cats in the garden, as they only carry the parasite in their poo for a couple of weeks after they are infected themselves, and I don't think it lives in the soil otherwise.

Let me know if you want any more info as I did all the research myself!

Hattie

If you could let me know that would be brilliant. Did you have the blood tests done?

No problem and yes, I did have the tests.

You need to ask your GP to refer you for a blood test. You need a toxoplasma igG test first to establish whether you already have the antibodies - ie you've been infected before and are therefore immune / safe. Roughly half the population have been infected at some point, usually from undercooked meat, and therefore have the antibodies. The danger is when you are infected for the first time when pregnant as you probably know.

If the first IgG test is positive that means you have indeed been infected at some point - probably before you got pregnant. But it might still be worth having the toxoplasma igM test to fond out if it was a recent infection.

If the igG is negative, as mine was, it means you don't have the antibodies, and will also need an igM test too - but try and make sure this is done about 25 days after the date when you think you might have been infected as the incubation period for the parasite is 5-23 days. If this is negative you can relax - there was no recent infection either. (Mine was - and yours probably will be!)

If it is positive though it doesn't necessarily mean you need to panic, as there is a high rate of 'false positives', because sometimes the antibodies they are testing for in the igM test can lurk for up to 18 months. If this happens you would need to talk to a specialist - an obstetric consultant or virologist - for advice.

I guess the reason I wanted to know whether I'd been infected is that there are things you can do at this point to reduce the chance the baby will become infected, if you know you were infected whilst pregnant (an amniocentesis, special antibiotics, etc.)

More info on the theory behind the testing h=is here - you might want to print this out for your GP! http://www.dpd.cdc.gov/dpdx/html/frames/S-Z/Toxoplasmosis/body_Toxoplasmosis_serol1.htm

But once again, it is very, very rare...

Hope this helps - good luck!

Hattie

thank you so much for that. I agree its very very unlikely, but I feel like if I can get tested it will help my peace of mind. Its also great to know that you can then actually DO something about it if you have been infected to reduce the risk to baby.

thanks again!

For your reasurance, if you have been doing gardening over a period of time (and cats really do use your garden as a toilet!), or if you have had significant contact with cats/cat litter, (at any time in your life), there is a very good chance you have had toxoplasmosis already - and should be immune.

If you have a liking for rare meat, this is also a source of infection.