Heart Flutter During Pregnancy

I am 38 and 11 weeks pregnant with my 4th child. Since I became pregnant, I have had heart flutters 5-30 times per day, 1-3 seconds each, every day. When I have the heart flutter I sometimes get an immediate rushing headache in the front/top of my head that lasts about a minute or so. I often have a ache between my shoulder blades when I breathe. I am often short of breath and constantly nauseous (welcome to pregnancy) and feel sick/heavy in my chest. I had occasional heart flutters (once every couple of weeks) prior to becoming pregnant. I did not have this problem with my previous pregnancies. I have cut out all caffeine. It happens whether I am relaxed/resting in bed as well as when I am working or playing. It doesn't seem to change with my stress level. I saw a internal medicine physician who listened to my heart with a stethescope and said everything sounded normal. He said to call if they became more than I could handle.

Is this normal? How many per day isn't normal? Can this affect the baby? How much is too much?  - they are making me sick.

[Michael J. McWilliams, M.D.]

That is such a common problem that I have seen more than one cardiologist say that they will not see pregnant woman with palpitations because it was filling up their clinic.

Talk to your doctor.  They can do some tests that will not harm the baby or you so that you know what they are.  They are almost certainly premature atrial or ventricular beats.  In a normal heart these are annoying but not dangerous.  There is no magic number on what is normal and I always try to resist the temptation to answer this question with a number.  If I say 5 is normal, I will worry every that has 6 or more and it is not that simple.  The best thing to do is talk  your doctor about it, but it is probably not a reason for concern.

I hope this helps and congratulations on the pregnancy.