I do, but not intentionally.
I got married in the spring, got pregnant in early summer, and gave birth the following spring. The wedding ceremony was planned; the baby was a gift. I wasn’t one of those uber anal women, who mapped out everything, in hopes of having a baby in the spring in order to avoid suffering through her third trimester during the dog days of summer. Nor did I care that my baby was born in the spring, so he or she could make the cut-off for kindergarten.
Baby books make a big deal about kids born during the springtime. The list of pros goes on for miles. Spring babies tend to reach milestones earlier than winter babies; spring newborns avoid the worst of the flu season; spring babies have fewer incidents of prickly heat, etc.
What the books I have don’t reveal is that spring babies are also more susceptible to congenital heart disease. I’m not surprised that the reading material I have doesn’t delve into the link between heart defects and spring newborns, since research on the relationship is relatively new. Still, parents who are looking to conceive in the coming months in order to give birth to a spring baby should know the following:
According to the American College of Cardiology, hypoplastic left heart syndrome is much more common in babies born in April through July than in kids born at any other time of the year. Hypoplastic left heart syndrome is a serious birth defect that affects the left side of the heart only and usually requires at least three surgeries to correct.
Researchers from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital studied 1,500 newborns from 38 children’s hospitals throughout the United States born between 1996 and 2006, who had hypoplastic left heart syndrome. Scientists concluded that there was indeed a link between birth dates and the disease… and the mother was to blame.
Researchers say that babies born in the spring had mothers, who were most likely in their second or third trimester during the winter months—-a time when strep throat runs rampant. As it turns out, strep throat is known to damage the left side of an unborn baby’s heart.
Researchers say they have preliminary evidence that many babies, who suffer hypoplastic left heart syndrome, were born to mothers with a serious history of strep throat infections.
Obviously, the correlation between spring babies and congenital heart disease shouldn’t prevent you from conceiving in the summer, but if you experience a sore throat during the months leading up to your spring birth, you should consult a doctor.
Fortunately, my spring baby was born without hypoplastic left heart syndrome. The bad news is that those baby books never told me that my spring baby was ripe for severe jaundice and that I would have to watch her scream and cry for hours on end as she laid strapped to a bilirubin bed for the first week of her life, and that she would have blood drawn on a daily basis until her numbers dropped.