Accidentally ate deli meat while pregnant, now what

What does the evidence say about accidentally ate deli meat during pregnancy?

1. Listeriosis symptoms can take days to weeks to appear after eating contaminated food, and include fever, muscle aches, diarrhea, headache, and stiff neck. Not everyone who's exposed develops symptoms at all. 1
2. Reheating deli meat, hot dogs, and cold cuts until steaming hot, at least 165°F (74°C), is the standard way to make them safer to eat during pregnancy, before eating rather than after. 2
3. In a nine-year U.S. national surveillance study, pregnant women had roughly 91 times the rate of invasive listeriosis compared with non-pregnant women of the same reproductive age, though the absolute rate stayed under 4 cases per 100,000 pregnant women a year. 3
4. Pregnancy-associated listeriosis cases run a longer incubation period than other cases: about three-quarters of pregnancy-associated cases developed symptoms within 5 weeks of exposure, and 90% within 6 weeks. 4
5. If you think you might have listeriosis after a high-risk food, the guidance is to contact your healthcare provider so they can decide whether monitoring or testing makes sense for your situation. 1

Is accidentally ate deli meat safe in each trimester?

• First trimester. Listeriosis in the first trimester has been linked to a higher chance of pregnancy loss, so it's worth telling your provider about the exposure and watching for fever or body aches in the weeks after.
• Second trimester. In the second trimester, listeria infection is more often linked to preterm labor or an infection that crosses the placenta. Fever, chills, or muscle aches in the weeks after eating deli meat are worth a same-day call.
• Third trimester. Watch the same way in the third trimester. Because the incubation period can stretch several weeks, symptoms occasionally show up close to delivery, so let your delivery team know about the deli meat if fever develops around that time.