Extremely high resting pulse during pregnancy. Any ideas?

Question

I am almost 18 weeks pregnant with my second child. Let me start out by saying that I have an appt. with my OB tomorrow. I don't want people to tell me to go to the doctor! I know I need to. Not trying to be rude or anything, but I know how some people are on here. I really would like to just hear any outcomes of similar stories or thoughts about what the doctor might tell me tomorrow (just for the heads up). My blood pressure is always a little on the normal/low side (100/60), which I am not at all worried about. My concern is my pulse rate. I will be laying down and I will start to feel like my heart is beating too fast, it gets hard to breath, and (for lack of better description) i feel like I am about to blow up. Over the last couple of days I have kept my stopwatch on me at all times. When I start to feel like this, I will record my pulse about evrey 3 minutes, or so. It will be around 120, then 130, then (like yesterday), it will spike to around 141. Then, it will slow back down after a couple of minutes, and will go back to 90 or so, and I will feel fine. I have tried to read other posts about this kind of experience, but there haven't been to many answers. I know being short of breath isn't uncommon, but I am only 18 weeks, and I shouldn't be experiencing it, yet. I know that your pulse increases when you're pregnant. But I also know that 120-140 is too high. I am just wondering if there is anything that anyone could think of that it might be. I really appreciate all of your answers. Please only comment helpful words of advise. Thankyou.

Answer 1

This could potentially be anything!

Bouts of high pulse rate (tachycardia) have literally almost 200 different causes that are possible.

It could be psychological, it could be metabolic, it could be a vitamin B, iron, or potassium deficiency,  it could be something you are ingesting (on any scripts?), it could be a heart problem, it could be that your blood pressure is actually dropping too low - orthostatic hypotension, it could be your adrenals, it could be an infection, it could be hypoglycemia..

The list goes on and on.

When you see your doctor tomorrow - they SHOULD do a comprehensive blood panel to check you for just about everything.   Make -sure- they are checking everything, though, and not just writing you off as anxious!  

Plus, it'd be a good idea, just to check, to hook you up to a heart monitor for a few minutes, especially helpful would be during an attack, and see how your heart beat is patterned.

I say this, because even though tachycardia is usually pretty benign - it can be extremely serious.  

Even something simple -- like low potassium, can become extremely serious and threaten your life.

Hey, are you having any other symptoms with this? (I know you said you are short of breath -- but that can be caused by the tachycardia itself OR be a related symptom.  I didn't know about that one, it is a symptom of panic attack, but it also can be a symptom of the tachycardia itself. ) Does it correlate to any activities -- like standing up?  Does it coincide with not having eaten for a while?  Do your leg muscles ache, what about your head?  Is your mind racing and you feel trapped or frightened? Do you get cold and clammy?  Do you feel nauseated or does your stomach hurt?  

Anything that goes alongside the tachycardia will give clues as to why this is happening.  Even the fact that perhaps nothing DOES coincide with it can be helpful.

It isn't normal, though.  Something is amiss, even if it IS just you getting anxious -- they need to deal with that!  

Panic attacks can be a symptom of an underlying -physical problem- by the way.  So if they do think that is the problem they NEED to check your blood anyway!

Good luck.  I hope they figure this out and it is something simple and easy to fix!  :)  

One time I had really low potassium and a urinary tract infection with it and had tachycardia and flu symptoms.  They thought I had the flu!  But it turned out to be the low potassium and UTI - much more serious than they had thought originally.. because I insisted they test me!  

It was a simple fix.  Took an antibiotic for the UTI and I took a supplement, and I drank lots of OJ and ate lots of bananas and felt better in a few days..  but imagine what would've happened if I'd let them brush me off?