Irregular heartbeat at 33 weeks?
I went for what I thought was a routine appointment with my doctor. When he was checking my baby’s heartbeat with the doppler, he noticed that the heartbeat sounded irregular (As in it skipped a couple times) He sent me for an ultrasound because he wanted to check and see if they could detect what he was hearing, and sure enough, they detected an irregular heartbeat as well. He said that the irregular heartbeat could be caused by a number of things, but the main reason he gave is if I had too much caffeine. And I admit, I splurged on the iced tea a little too much over the weekend and had a small cup of coffee (as in I fill up my mug with about 1/4 cup of coffee and fill the rest with water to dilute it). He seems to think that it could have been caused by the caffeine. He wants me to lay off the caffeine and go for a follow-up ultrasound tomorrow morning and depending on results of that, may have me and my husband talk with a fetal abnormality counselor. Only thjing is that tomorrow is ONLY and ultrasound, and I don’t see my doctor again until next Tuesday for another ultrasound and my follow up appointment… I’m really scared!! Even though the ultrasound from yesterday showed no sign of heart abnormalities, I just feel guilty thinking that I could have caused harm to the baby.
THEN not thinking this morning (I was crying all night and felt slumpy this morning) I ate a chocolate covered donut, and I knwo that chocolate has SOME caffeine in it 
I’m really freaking out and stressing myself out… Anyone ever had this happen?? Any words of encouragement to help me get through the next 24 hours and 7 days ?!?!
Even the ultrasound tech asked me before we started if I had caffeine earlier in the day, and she’s seen it too where if there’s a lot of caffeine in the system that it can cause the heartbeat to be irregular. There have been no decreases in movement with my little one and everything else is perfectly healthy with my baby. They even told me she has a head full of hair and weighs approx 4lbs 13oz
Filed under: Fetal Doppler FAQs
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you should REALLY calm down. just cut out all caffeine. try not eating too much sugar too. doughnuts aren;t very healthy! just relax. i’m sure everything will be fine and it was just that you had too much caffeine.
Honestly, I think you would have had to drink a hell-of-a-lot of caffeine to make the baby’s heartbeat irregular. She could just have a murmur, which is not a big deal at all. They detected a murmur in my son’s heartbeat at around 35 weeks and thought it was an "irregular" heartbeat. They were monitoring it when I delivered him at 36 weeks and then were like "oh, it wasn’t an irregular heartbeat, it was a harmless murmur." I have a murmur and so does my mother and youngest brother. It can be genetic and is often completely harmless. So that seems like a valid option. And that one chocolate donut should not affect her that much. It has so little caffeine in it. The weird thing is that I work in a center for women who are pregnant and are/were addicted to drugs and see these girls downing soda and coffee while pregnant (and can’t do anything to stop it, but I don’t condone it) and not once have I talked an OB who said their baby had an irregular heartbeat. So, I am not sure about that reasoning, but you should do all the follow ups and it might turn out to be nothing. Good luck
Hun, I feel so sorry for you you’re stressing over nothing that you have done. They say you shouldn’t have too much caffeine due to hyperactivity in babies but that’s only if you drink like 7 cups of tea a day and endless cans of coke; not by over indulging a bit over the weekend. If that was the case then I’m pretty sure my baby would be experiencing the exact same problem as until recently I drank loads of coke and tea as I was pretty much addicted but now I don’t drink any coke, a cup of tea a day and I hardly ever eat chocolate anyway. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about and if it showed no foetal heart abnormalities then that’s great. Try and relax and don’t feel guilty. If there is something wrong with your baby then they’ll find it and treat it. Good luck to you and I hope everything goes well tomorrow! xx
Your dr kind of sounds like a quack. You weren’t drinking even anywhere near enough caffeine to cause the baby’s hearbeat to be irregular. If that’s the case, then both of my kids should have had irregular heartbeats. I drank way way way way more caffeine than you,and both of my kids are fine.I drank coffee with my son the whole time I was pregnant,and it never effected eithers’ heartbeat either. Even if I had drank two colas or cups of coffee before I went to an appointment,my babies never had irregular heartbeats. I’d look into a second opinion on that,and don’t be so hard on yourself hun. Yes,chocolate has caffeine,but again-if irregular heartbeats could be caused by chocolate (VERY VERY VERY slight amount of caffeine) slight enough to not even mention it,and so many people don’t even know that chocolate has caffeine in it! I would maybe see a different doctor,get another ultrasound done,and see what they say about the irregular heartbeats. That makes no sense to me. Everyone I know has drank more caffeine,and NONE of their babies have had irregular heartbeats. Yea,you’re probably doing the right thing,but I don’t understand why the dr would jump straight at "it’s caffeine". As the one user said,she could just have a heart murmer which is quite common in babies,but most grow out of them within their first year of life.