With a new baby on the horizon, pregnancy is often a time of excitement and anticipation. However, it is often also a time for heightened awareness around health and safety matters — and rightly so. Indeed it’s instinctive to want to protect both the expectant mother and the unborn child. While many expectant parents are familiar with common pregnancy risks, one lesser-known yet serious threat is congenital toxoplasmosis. This parasitic infection can have devastating consequences for unborn babies. In today’s post, we’ll explore what congenital toxoplasmosis is, the risks it poses, and practical steps pregnant women and families with young children can take to minimise exposure.
What is Congenital Toxoplasmosis?
Toxoplasmosis is an infection that’s caused by the parasite Toxoplasma gondii. While the infection is often harmless and asymptomatic for healthy adults, it becomes particularly concerning when a pregnant woman contracts it, as the parasite can cross the placenta and infect the developing baby. This is known as congenital toxoplasmosis.
How Common is Congenital Toxoplasmosis?
According to the pregnancy and baby charity Tommy’s, approximately 350 people are infected by toxoplasmosis each year in England and Wales. So, the chances of infection during pregnancy are small. However, this article is inspired by a real-life case where such an infection occurred during pregnancy. Sadly, the adverse effects for the child were severe and permanent.
What are the Risks to Unborn Babies & Young Children?
The timing of any exposure to the Toxoplasmosis gondii parasite during pregnancy affects both the risk of transmission and the potential severity of the effects on the foetus/child. While the transmission risk is lower during early pregnancy, the possible adverse effects for the developing foetus are much more severe. Conversely, the risk of transmission to the child is higher in late pregnancy but the potential effects may be milder or appear later in their lives. Depending on the timing, therefore, the risks to the child could be anything from mild effects that appear later in life to something as severe as brain abnormalities, eye damage, or even stillbirth. Other potential effects include seizures and neurological issues, miscarriages, hearing problems, learning disabilities and more. It is therefore incredibly important for expectant families to understand how to avoid toxoplasmosis infection.
“If you get toxoplasmosis while you’re pregnant it can cause miscarriage. If it spreads to your baby it can cause serious complications.” — NHS
How Pregnant Women Can Reduce The Risk
Preventing toxoplasmosis during pregnancy is crucial. Here are key measures expectant mothers should take:
Food Safety
- Avoid touching and/or eating raw or undercooked meat, especially lamb, pork and venison.
- Avoid touching and/or eating cured/dried/smoked meats like salami, Parma ham etc.
- Avoid handling and/or eating raw or undercooked oysters, clams and mussels.
- Ensure that fruit and vegetables are thoroughly washed.
- Avoid unpasteurised dairy products that may carry the parasite, especially those containing unpasteurised goat’s milk.
- Wash hands, kitchen surfaces, and utensils, especially after handling uncooked meat or indeed any of the above.
Pets & Animals
- If you are pregnant and own a cat, avoid changing the litter box yourself. If that’s not possible, ensure that you wear protective gloves while doing so and thoroughly wash your hands once you’ve finished.
- Consider keeping pet cats indoors during pregnancy to prevent them from hunting infected rodents or birds.
- Don’t give pet cats uncooked or undercooked meat.
- Avoid contact with sheep, especially pregnant sheep and lambs.
Hygiene and Environmental Care
- Always wash your hands after gardening or handling soil.
- Wear gloves while gardening or handling sandboxes (sandpits may be contaminated with cat faeces).
- Ensure meat is cooked to safe and sufficiently high temperatures.
Protecting Young Children from Infection
For families with toddlers and young children, it’s important to maintain hygiene practices to reduce exposure:
- Teach children to wash hands after playing outdoors, handling pets, and before eating.
- Cover outdoor sandpits to prevent contamination by neighbourhood cats.
- Ensure family meals follow proper food safety guidelines.
The Cat Myth
Many who have heard of toxoplasmosis believe its cause is linked primarily to cats. While cats are a host for Toxoplasma gondii and it can be contracted through contact with their faeces, they are not the most common way people get infected. Most often, contaminated food (such as undercooked meat, unwashed vegetables, or contaminated water) is the primary source of infection. Pregnant women should therefore be cautious about handling soil, raw meat, and unpasteurised dairy — not just cats. The NHS itself says:
“You cannot catch toxoplasmosis from stroking a cat, having a cat as a pet or from coming into contact with someone who’s got it.”
Stay Vigilant
Congenital toxoplasmosis is a serious but preventable condition. If they take the proper precautions, expectant mothers and families with young children can significantly reduce their risk of infection. Awareness and education are crucial, so feel free to bookmark and share this information with loved ones to help protect future generations. Learn more about toxoplasmosis and its symptoms here.
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Important Notice
These are introductory guidelines only — parents/guardians will need to do their own comprehensive research to learn more. They may also wish to consult our related tips on food safety and hygiene around children.
Children are all different. They learn and develop at different rates to each other and that applies to potty training success too. Circumstances in each family are different too, and this will also have an effect. In other words, there is no hard and fast rule about the age by which little ones should have mastered the use of the potty. Parents should therefore not worry if their child is slower to master toileting than their siblings or peers. That said, some very rough guidelines will always be useful to parents and these follow.
Allowing your toddler to help choose their potty can automatically make it less daunting and instead more of a ‘friendly’ thing to have in their life.
Children can also be encouraged by having their own toy potties. They, and parents, can ‘train’ teddies and dolls to use these during play. Doing so will help them be both relaxed and more educated about potty training — even proactive.
Don’t forget to make potty training fun! Many of these tips will help towards that, including the rewards idea (#4), praise (#5), characters on potties (#7), toileting-themed music (#8), and so on.
household cleanliness, and for their independence.
Have you ever noticed that some babies are born with blue or grey eyes that later change to brown, green or hazel? It’s a magical metamorphosis that sometimes occurs in growing infants and it can be quite intriguing. Parents may indeed wonder whether their newborn child’s eyes are going to change or remain the same as they were at birth. The answer comes down to a combination of time, location, genetics and something called Melanin and today’s article explores this captivating phenomenon.
When we talk about eye colour we are, of course, talking primarily about the colour of the irises of a human’s eyes. The iris is the circular muscle around the centre pupil and it is this muscle that governs how much light can pass into the eye by making the pupil larger or smaller. When there is lots of light around, the iris constricts the size of the pupil and, in contrast, makes it big when light levels are low.
Melanin is a protein that’s secreted by special skin cells called melanocyte cells, which form colouration pigmentation in our bodies, including in the eyes, hair and skin. When it comes to the eyes, a lot of melanin pigment means the eye colour is more likely to be dark, for example brown. In contrast, those without much melanin eye pigmentation will have lighter eyes, for example, grey or blue. It is also those lighter colours that are most affected by the Rayleigh Scattering and Tyndall effects that we discussed in the last section.
Melanin is a protective protein and, by having more melanin pigmentation, an eye has greater protection against harmful ultraviolet (UV) sun rays. That’s one of the reasons that populations from hot, sunnier countries are more likely to have brown or darker eyes — because those are better protected from the sun’s UV rays. Indeed, brown eyes are the most common eye colour in infancy, despite some common misconceptions. It is true, however, that blue or grey eyes are common in infancy in Northern Europe, where the sunlight is less strong.
Genetics also play a part in the colour of the eyes and can be helpful when attempting to predict a newborn’s eye colouring. However, correctly predicting the colour of a baby’s eyes based solely on that of parents is not guaranteed. That’s because any inherited colouration may skip one or more generations. And, with a mix of different chromosomes and genes being passed down from parents, grandparents and beyond, skipping generations can sometimes result in completely unexpected eye colouring in infants. Genes will also control how much melanin will initially be present in a newborn’s eyes as well as affecting further production as the child ages and the eyes adjust to conditions.
Heterochromia is a condition that affects less than 1% of the world’s population. Those affected may have two different coloured eyes or perhaps two colours present in one eye. The causes of heterochromia include physical injury, disease, genetics or sometimes the use of specific medications.