A couple of decades ago, women with congenital heart disease or other heart problems were urged to avoid getting pregnant. The fear was the extra strain of a pregnancy on the heart could harm the mother and baby.
However, in the 14 years since The University of Kansas Hospital heart program opened its pregnancy clinic, it is now far more common to encourage women with heart problems to go through pregnancy with the proper monitoring. Kevin Mulhern, MD, cardiologist, has run the program since the beginning and says most of these women can have trouble free pregnancies and births. As an example, he cites Tess Gorski of Knob Noster, Missouri, who is now undergoing her third pregnancy under Dr. Mulhern’s watchful eye.
