When I got pregnant, I received a large number of emails (from my mother, my friend Nancy, etc.) with dire warnings about the cat: “Do not clean the litter box!” Sometimes with multiple exclamation points. My doctor was kind of dismissive about this concern. She told me that if I didn’t want the chore anymore, I could tell Jesse that it was dangerous, but in her view it was fine.Read more at location 1992
if you have been exposed to toxoplasmosis before pregnancy, there is no cause for concern, but if you are exposed for the first time during pregnancy it can be dangerous for the baby, causing low IQ, vision problems, or death.Read more at location 1998
Although uncooked meat is the primary source of toxoplasmosis, it is also possible to get it from cat faeces. If your cat has been eating uncooked meat, that is.Read more at location 2000
Cats are infected by eating something (like raw meat) that gives them the parasite.Read more at location 2002
Once they are exposed once, they typically acquire immunity and are not exposed again. This means you’re at risk if you’re exposed to a cat during their first exposure. If your cat is old, regardless of whether it lives outside, it probably has already had this.Read more at location 2004
one study of pregnant women in Europe compared those with and without toxoplasmosis infection and looked to see what behaviours were more common among women who were infected.1 They found no evidence that cats matter: women with this infection were no more likely to have a cat at all, clean a litter box or have a cat who hunts outside.Read more at location 2007
The one caveat to this is that you may want to be a little careful if you get a kitten for the first time while pregnant, especially if you feed it a lot of raw meat. In fact, one study in the United States did find that owning three or more kittens (although not owning one or two) was associated with higher toxoplasmosis rates.Read more at location 2012
Somewhat surprisingly: although cat litter seems to have little risk, there is significant toxoplasmosis risk from gardening. That study in Europe that was reassuring on cats did find a strong association between toxoplasmosis and working with soil.Read more at location 2015
The primary concern with hair dye is that toxic chemicals in the dye will affect the baby. In very high doses, some of the chemical components of hair dye can increase birth defects in rodents.Read more at location 2020
Human studies have generally not shown any association with an increased risk of birth defects. A couple of small studies have suggested a link with childhood cancer later, although larger studies have not confirmed this.Read more at location 2024
one study comparing Swedish hairdressers to the rest of the Swedish population showed a small but statistically significant increase in low-birth-weight babies among the hairdressers.Read more at location 2027
In the end, this finding wasn’t supported by other studies and it seems likely that the result was driven by other aspects of the job (for example, the fact that hairdressers spend all of their time standing up).Read more at location 2029
it has been suggested that raising your body temperature during the first months of pregnancy can lead to birth defects.Read more at location 2039
Some evidence for this comes from a 2011 study.7 The authors identified about 11,000 babies with birth defects and 7,000 without. They compared their mothers’ behaviour during pregnancy and looked at whether the mothers of the babies with birth defects were more likely to have used hot tubs during early pregnancy. The authors considered seventeen birth defects. For two of them (an intestinal problem called gastroschisis and a neural tube defect called anencephaly) they found an association with hot tub use. On its own, it is a little hard to draw confident conclusions from this. Maybe these findings just showed up by chance because the authors were testing so many outcomes.Read more at location 2040
It’s probably important to note that the real concern is about an increase in body temperature to above 38 degrees Celsius or so. Hot tubs are typically about 40–41 degrees Celsius, as is Bikram Yoga.Read more at location 2050
One question you might be asking yourself: What about really hot days? Is that the same thing?Read more at location 2054
there is some evidence from Spain on the effect of heat on birth. The authors found that very hot days seemed to prompt women to go into labour earlier (by about five days).9Read more at location 2055
