How Can A Woman NOT Know She's Pregnant?

Factual Questions
1

A friend just called to tell me that her son’s 25 year old girlfriend just gave birth to an 8.5 lb baby boy. The girlfriend swears that she had no idea that she was pregnant and I just find that hard to believe.

I understand the first trimester completely, and maybe even the second. She had just changed from an active field job to a desk job so she had gained a little weight. She said she had been emotional and snippy a couple of times lately and just didn’t understand why because she’s never like that. But how in the hell could she not feel that little alien life form in her womb during the last 3 months?

She woke up Friday night with severe abdominal pains and couldn’t urinate. She went to the ER and about an hour and a half later, she was the (surprised) mother of a 8.5 lb baby boy.

Having never been pregnant, I dont’ come from a point of knowledge here so hence my question…how can this be true?

2

IANAD, nor have I ever been, nor will I ever be preggers. But one possibility is that she’s lying. A baby would be one way to tie a boyfriend down. (Of course, that would just mean that he’s pretty oblivious as well.)

3

25 years is a bit old for this to happen, but apparently it’s not unknown in teenage pregnancies. The school where my ex-wife taught had a case of a girl of, I think, 15, who gave birth in a toilet at school and, like your friend’s girlfriend, claimed to have had no idea that she was pregnant until the baby started coming out. She’d thought the labour pains were stomach cramps or something, and was trying to use the toilet for less unusual activities. According to my ex, this wasn’t without precedent.

Mother and baby survived the birth OK.

But at 25? Amazing.

4

My niece gave birth at 19 and was similiarly unaware of her pregnancy. In her case, there were extenuating circumstances, although I still wonder sometimes.

She had a history of endometriosis and ovarian cysts and a very irregular cycle, so she often had pain and bloating and missing periods for months wasn’t unusual. Her uterus was severly tipped, in fact they’ve been unable to conceive in the 9 years since then because of that, and there was no outward baby bump at all, just a thickening of her waist she chalked up to the freshman fifteen. She didn’t suffer any morning sickness or regular symptoms, and the baby was very premature so she didn’t have months to debate whether those funny gas feelings were something else instead.

So, it can happen, unlikely but possible.

5

Happened to my 21 year old cousin last year.

She and the boyfriend both swear they had no idea. I know she didn’t look pregnant - two weeks before the baby arrived, my mother saw her and voiced concern to me later that she might be anorexic because she was getting so thin, and a week before the baby came she and her mother went clothes shopping and were trying on outfits together, and her mother says there was no belly or anything to suggest she was pregnant. One night she was having bad back pains and her boyfriend insisted she go to the hospital and have them checked out. 20 minutes after they got there, they were the proud parents of a baby girl (5 pounds, 7 ounces). Then came a whole bunch of seriously awkward phone calls.

My fear is that she hid the pregnancy because the boyfriend had already pressured her into an abortion once before. He’s a control freak, and runs every aspect of her life. She’s always been a motherly soul and adores children, but she never stands up to him on anything… and he didn’t want children. Even within 24 hours of the baby’s birth, while talking about how shocked, amazed and in love with his small daughter he was, he was affirming that she would be an only child and that they wouldn’t have any more. She just didn’t say anything.

You hear of this happening every so often, but why does it always seem to happen to people who aren’t really in a good place to be having kids? Just once, I’d like to hear about a financially secure married couple in their late twenties/early thirties who were thinking of starting a family anyway having a surprise baby.

6

Good point Cazzle.

A woman I know, halfway good friend, just gave birth to her 5th child. She didn’t even realize she was pregnant until she was almost 6 months along. Sure she had extenuating health circumstances, and is pretty overweight, but still. I think there was a lot of denial involved in that one.

7

My partner’s cousin just gave birth last year and had no idea she was pregnant. It was her second child. She was already about 25 lbs overweight and only gained roughly 15 during her pregnancy. She had a period every month and wrote the mood swings off as a combination of exhaustion from her job and from perimenopause. She literally woke in the middle of the night with horrible pain. She thought it was something intestinal until her water broke.
She delivered a month early and the baby was healthy but she had no idea at all she was pregnant until the night she delivered. She’s ecstatic, however, to have another child and also because of the great story it makes. :slight_smile:

8

I doubt that she is stupid…

9

Back in the '80s a friend’s friend’s wife (they were all roommates, and the friend’s friend was an acquaintance of mine), who was in her early-20s, didn’t know she was pregnant. She said she thought she’d just eaten too many burritos.

10

Someone needs to have the “Birds and Bees” talk with her and explain that burritos don’t cause that.

A friend of mine had a similar experience, his Girlfriend called him up to say she was in Labor and he should hurry round.

Given that she’s a totally controlling partner and very very paranoid about him running off, I’m a little suspicious.

11

Other than anecdotes, isn’t there also a psychological condition that happens with some pregnant women which causes them to live in a profound state of denial?

12

A friend of a friend found out she was pregnant with her second child about two weeks before the due date. My friend says that the woman had been to her doctor two or three times during the course of the pregnancy and had had negative pregnancy tests more than once. The woman was overweight and suspected she was pregnant, but when the tests came back negative, she was looking for other problems with her doctor. This is my friend’s story. I’m dubious. What kind of idiot doctor could miss that? I’m with the OP, I can’t imagine not knowing I’m pregnant.

13

Yes, it’s a condition called “being human”. Being human, young and scared is even more likely. Being human, young, scared and ignorant of your body is the most likely. If you’re looking for something actually pathological, I can’t think of anything that qualifies in all cases. Certainly Body Dysmorphic Disorder might play a role in some cases, but not all of them.

Renee, the hormone that pregnancy tests test for, called Beta Human Chorionic Gonadotropin, or ß-hCG, goes down often to a point untestable in the second and third trimesters. In fact, if it doesn’t, it’s one indication of genetic problems like Down’s Syndrome. So if her doctor was using an EPT but she didn’t go see him until month 4, it’s entirely possible she would not be diagnosed as pregnant. Although I would expect him to do an ultrasound at some point just to see what was in there if it wasn’t a baby. A fast growing tumor or cyst is nothing to ignore, either!

It’s also entirely likely, although not common, to experience regular bleeding that looks like a period while you’re pregnant, especially if you’re overweight to begin with.

Added to that, some babies are lazy little buggers who don’t kick much.

So the general recipe is: young woman who isn’t all that in touch with her body who continues to bleed, is overweight or extremely tall and makes the guess that she’s just putting on a little weight due to some other circumstances, with a smallish, quiet baby whose movements are explained away as “gas” or “stomach cramps”.

The stories that most surprise me are the OP, with an over 8 pound baby, and cazzle’s, with an underweight mother and a very recent outside witness. Those are likely to have an extra dose of denial, I think.

14

Actually, I have heard of that. I read it somewhere (Reader’s Digest iirc) that this older couple came into the hospital with the wife in quite a bit of pain. She gave birth to a daughter.

They had given up trying for a child after a number of years, had been told many times that she couldn’t concieve and she was already overweight. I can see how it might be possible to not realize in that sort of situation, if you think you can’t have a baby at all you might discount certain signs as something else and of course some people are lucky enough to have very few symptoms.

That said, having been pregnant myself, it makes me wonder how you can completely discount all the moving around going on inside later in the pregnancy.

15

My friend who is quite overweight was pregnant and lost the baby. She didn’t realize that there was still a twin alive until quite awhile later. The baby was born under five pounds but grew up nice and strong.

16

That’s what I always wonder when I hear these stories. My kids both had hiccups in utero quite a lot at the end, which was by turns amusing and annoying, depending on what I was doing (if I was awake or trying to get some sleep).

I think a lot of it has to be a huge case of denial. There’s just no way you couldn’t know.

17

I saw this on an Oprah a while backl. One woman claimed she was sitting in her car in the supermarket parking with what she thought were cramps and out popped a baby boy! She had just had a child ten months earlier and was breast feeding, so she didn’t think anything about not having her periods.

I’m somewhat skeptical, but I’ve never been pregnant.

18

No, that’s not what I’m thinking of. It’s something along the lines of a subtype of an adjustment disorder in DSM-IV, like “maladaptive denial of physical disorder”, only one pertaining specifically to pregnancy rather than illness or injury.

19

Putting aside the lack of a period or the weight gain, babies kick and move around in utero. How can a woman not feel that?

20

Some cases are adjustment disorders, but not all.

The thing we have is a bunch of different cases: are you in denial if you keep getting your period, you’ve been told you’re infertile, you only gain 15 pounds and feel “gas” pains? It’s a far different case from a woman who is told she’s pregnant, shown the pregnancy test, gets a huge belly, feels kicking and still denies she’s pregnant.

Here’s an interesting article on psychotic and non-psychotic denial of pregnancy.