I just watched, well, I won’t spoil it for anyone, but I watched a new episode of a fictional show in which such a thing was portrayed, and I know it is entirely possible.
What I want to know is: how much has that/would that/could that completely warp your psychological well-being, depending on the place you started from (adult desiring pregnancy, adult not desiring pregnancy, teenager not desiring, much older not desiring, etc.)
If you have known or been such a person, can you share what the psychological blowback was, if any?
I only heard it through the grapevine, but supposedly a girl I used to work with in college didn’t know until she went into labor in the residence hall shower
ETA: Upon rereading your OP I don’t really help your cause at all. Sorry
This happened to my aunt. She was always very obese and when she was in her mid forties, she was having a lot of female issues, which she attributed to menopause.
The way I heard the story was through my mom. She said her sister finally went to the doctor and the doctor did an exam and told her that she was starting to dilate. That’s how she found out she was very pregnant.
A few days later, she finally had the little girl she’d always wanted.
I’m told my nephew’s mother didn’t know she was pg w/ either of her children (8 years and a dad apart) until she was well into her 6th month. I don’t believe it, mind you, though this **is **a woman in her 30s whose parent still handle her bills and banking though she works a full time job and has since her teens.
There’s not knowing and then there’s living in denial; it seems the latter is responsible more often than the former considering the mothers I’ve read about in my life.
Happened to my cousin - went to the hospital with back pain that she attributed to a fall a few days earlier, but she was actually in labor and gave birth within the hour. My cousin was mid 20s, slender, active and fit, in a committed relationship with the father. I don’t have first-hand knowledge of the psychological fallout, but she seemed to do fine and is a lovely mum, devoted to her little girl. I know it was hard on her dad who comes from a traditionalist culture and was hit with a massive whammy of unmarried daughter’s pregnancy (to somewhat douchey boyfriend they were secretly hoping she’d outgrow) and the arrival of her baby all in the same moment. He called my dad to announce the news, and he burst into tears. Still, he rallied, and the family seem as close as ever, with their little unexpected blessing the light of everyone’s life - she’s about 9 now.
I don’t see why people have issues believing someone can be oblivious - I had PCOS and when I was in my 30s could go a year without menstruating, and then turn around and bleed for 2 months straight <shrug> when I complained to the Navy issued OB/GYN I was effectively told “You have PCOS, suck it up” and had nothing done about it. Not every woman bleeds every month like clockwork, many women can skip months without being on any meds to accomplish it - you just need PCOS.
While on duty in Labor and Delivery back in the day, I delivered a few babies to women who claimed to have no idea they were pregnant, and more than one of them gave convincing stories of truly being unaware. They all showed up in the ER complaining of abdominal pain, and got their pregnancies diagnosed there before getting sent up to me.
I can maybe understand obese women not noticing any weight gain, or perhaps older women with irregular periods not being too concerned.
But I totally FAIL to understand how someone can go for so many months not feeling a baby moving inside them. It’s not like wind, really it’s not, unless your gut-wind causes your stomach to distend in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways. A baby’s movements in-utero are pretty bloody distinctive, and elbows and feet sticking out of your abdomen FEEL like bones (which they are).
So, maaaaybe…a morbidly obese, peri or menopausal woman, no previous pregnancies, with a limited awareness of most bodily functions AND with a foetus who doesn’t move much at all *might *end up in the delivery suite ignorant of her ‘state’.
So do you recall how they deal with it emotionally? Were there any serious meltdowns? I sure as hell would lose it BIGTIME if that had ever happened to me. Total hysteria.
The was the one thing about pregnancy I wanted to experience. Never wanted kids, not for a second, ever in my life, even when I was a little girl…the whole thing sounded like a nightmare to me…EXCEPT the actual pregnancy, and feeling life inside you. Fascinates me.
But I can imagine how someone might have a pretty quiet baby…not all babies are active, are they? (I watched some videos of flipping breech babies recently…yikes… and one of them did exactly what I’d heard from mom hers did: flipped right back the minute they were done.)
For the women who have already had children it’s unexpected but probably not soul-shattering, they’ve been through the experience before, and I’m sure for some they consider it a miracle. It must be a lot different for a woman who wasn’t planning on having children.
ETA: Women who are carrying a lot of excess weight as a result of eating a lot may be experiencing a lot of gastric distress already. So couple denial with a legitimate reason for some abdominal pain and the kicking may not be the big tip-off it should be.
It happened to the daughter of a friend of mine; my friend ended up raising the child until he was about 8 years old.
How did the daughter not know she was pregnant? Apparently it was a combination of obesity, lack of knowledge (she’d never been pregnant before, so the “feeling of a baby moving inside her” was not something she could be expected to recognize), denial, general goofiness/irresponsibility, and a history of irregular periods.
As big a shock as it was to the daughter, though, it must have been my friend who reeled from it the most. There she was, thinking that her daughter (about 20 at the time) was finally launched into the world and more or less taking care of herself, now my friend could relax, when … SURPRISE! She got to be a parent all over again. (Daughter was something of a mess, only kind of hanging on to her own independence, and not in any shape to take on the responsibility of a child.)
The surprise delivery turned into a fantastic kid, by the way. Super smart, polite, talkative, extremely cute; despite the non-promising start to his existence, I think he has a good shot at growing up into a stable, productive, and decent person, thanks in no small part to his grandmother.
Not quite reaching delivery, but I know several cases of women who found out they were pregnant in their second or third trimester. The younger ones had been told they could not have children, the older ones had been told they could not have children any more. Reactions include incredulity (but… you said I couldn’t!), elation and distress (how will the family react, I’m too old, we weren’t planning on having one yet, at my age it’s high risk by definition, etc.).
Sometimes the moment of belief is when the baby moves, sometimes a baby that isn’t moving as much as his elder siblings did is one of the reasons a possible pregnancy takes time to be considered.
Not exactly. There was someone near where I grew up who was pregnant but nobody else knew. She did know, and didn’t tell anyone, she was so large already nobody noticed.
She also wasn’t very bright, to a clinically severe degree. It’s possible her kid was taken away from her, though I can’t recall the details.
It happened to a schoolmate of mine. She was a little heavy but not especially overweight and just a teenager. She claimed she had no idea until went into labor at home and no one else noticed it beforehand either. Her mother saw that she was in enough pain to call an ambulance but didn’t figure out the cause. The baby was delivered normally and made it just fine.
I guess it is more common than many people assume.
It didn’t get all the way to delivery, but a tumor they planned to operate on in the mid-1950s turned out to be an very nearly full-term baby who’d grow up to become one of my mother’s friends. Apparently the mom was in her early 50s and everyone assumed that one of her known uterine tumors had grown rapidly rather than think she might be pregnant.
I can’t help you with your questions but I have heard the stories from my nurse sister who worked maternity for a time. It does happen.
My ex-wife didn’t know she was pregnant with her first (not mine) child until she was over 6 months in. Irregular periods and not showing till late helped. I can understand it because with our first she knew right away but didn’t show until after 5 months. Then bam! Super pregnant.