We’ve all heard stories about women who never knew they were pregnant until they delivered, but I never really believed it could happen until today. A friend called right before I left for work to say that an acquaintance of ours went to the E.R. feeling ill this morning and ended up in L&D giving birth to a full-term infant. I’ve always considered the girl an idiot myself, but from what I’ve heard, the story seems believable - I just can’t understand HOW one could have no inkling. For an entire nine months.
She’s married, in her mid-twenties, with a preschool-age son, so it’s not like we’re talking about some twelve-year-old with an abusive father to hide from. She’s also a C.N.A. who takes evening and weekend call for a home nursing company, so surely she has at least a rudimentary idea of how the human body functions. I saw her last week and she damn sure didn’t look pregnant to me.
I’ve known several girls who hid pregnancies for the entire gestation period, and I’ve known women who didn’t figure out what was going on until the fifth or sixth month, but this one I just don’t get. Anyone else know someone who didn’t find out until her water broke?
I’m sorry that I can’t answer your question, but I want to say I am very interested in hearing somebody else’s answer. This has always bugged me too. I can understand not knowing because of a lack of a period. Or because of unexplained weight gain. But there are so many other indicators of pregnancy, I can’t see explaining them all away.
I didn’t bother to search - I lurk about all the time and must have just missed that one. Thanks, Lsura.
Re: The lack of a period - a high school friend of mine had periods every month until the sixth, so she just thought she was getting fat. She was, however, only fifteen years old. As for weight gain, as I mentioned in the OP, I saw this girl last week. if anything, she appeared to have lost weight since the last time I saw her.
If a woman has spotty periods, she might conceive and go nine months without her period, never missing it.
Conversely, some women continue to have periods while they are pregnant.
Obese women often don’t show nearly as much as slender women, and some women - like myself - carry much of their additional weight around their waist. Any extra, and people might just think I’d been hitting the brownies a little extra hard.
However, I think there are few cases of that. Most, I believe, spring from ignorance and denial. There are women who simply do not understand the process of sex, conception, pregnancy, and birth. There are women who are so traumatized by the thought of being pregnant, they shut it away and won’t consider it.
I’ve also herad/read about women who are older and think they’re going into menopause or who go on horomonal birth control. They expect to be missing periods and to have their horomones throw their bodies out of whack - so the pregnancy is easily attributed to another cause.
I’ve seen this a few times – women who are 36 weeks pregnant or later and unaware.
Not always denial. If you spot around the time of your normal period, don’t gain weight, have minimal morning sickness and are continually sexually active, it is not always obvious, especially if baby doesn’t quicken due to a posterior presentation, etc.
The other possibility is that they adopted a baby and did not want the baby to know that he/she was adopted… And ofcourse letting other people know makes it tough to keep it from the kid later on. Just a guess!!
I have seen it a number of times in my practice…obesity and denial. The fetal movement is thought to be gas and the weight gain is considered by the pt. to be fat and she usually wears very loose fitting clothes so even her family doesn’t suspect she’s pregnant.
Even in labor, a number of these patients insist they cannot be pregnant and they “never did anything” to get pregnant. Only the ultrasound finally convinces the pt. or delivery itself.
This happened to my best friend when she was a freshman in college. It was her first child, but after having two more children, she reports having no symptoms of pregnancy whatsoever at any point with any of hers.
She is very small – 5’1", maybe 110 lbs. – and does NOT show when she is pregnant. She continued to have her periods, irregular as hers always were. She had what she described as a stomachache one day, and delivered a 6 lb. 7 oz. baby boy less than 45 minutes later.
In hindsight, the only indication she could find of this pregnancy was a sudden aversion to Pop-Tarts. She had only gained about 15 pounds, which she attributed to beer and pizza (freshman in college, remember). Despite the lack of pre-natal care and the less-than-ideal conditions, that child is now a healthy, intelligent 10-year-old.
This very attractive woman told me that she had been water-skiing the day before she gave birth to her first child. She said that she didn’t realize it until her water broke. Two sisters were there and backed up her story.
Another anecdote, albeit a third-or-fourth hand one:
At the hospital where I work, over the scrub sinks in the OR, they post little medical tidbits, headlines, things to read while you scrub. One involves a study someone had undertaken to study the bladder sizes of professionals in the various wards at some hospital. Whether the ER people could “hold it” longer than the pediatricians, whether it was true that the ortho surgeons regularly Foley-cathetered themselves, etc.
It came as small surprise that the ER types did in fact have the largest average capacity, over a liter. But one of the branches (I forget which, offhand) had a skewed-low figure due to the fact that one of the testees (heh-heh, I said “testes”) had an abnormally small value of something like 124 mL. This was because this particular woman, a doctor, mind you, had an undiagnosed 34 week pregnancy!!
So, apparently, it can happen to all kinds. Don’t be too hard on your idiot friend, jane.
Just to put to rest this theory…If we assume that these women sought medical attention any time soon after producing these babies, we can also assume that they actually did deliver them. The evidence that would be clear to a doctor that a woman had recently had a baby (a not-fully involuted uterus, lochia, etc.) would be rather difficult to fake.
I watch the medical channels on TV and sure enough, sooner or later they have a spot with some girl who comes in complaining of being sick and pops a baby she did not know she was carrying. I am always astounded by this. I mean, I know enough about pregnancies to know that the baby kicks, diet changes, so does (and how!) the woman’s attitude, and the weight gain just soars.
I mean, like she never noticed that she was putting on something like 50 pounds? That her period stopped for months? That she was throwing up in the mornings and getting cravings for anything from wall paint to pickles and ice cream?
Most of the girls/women I’ve seen waddle in this way are minorities and appear to not be the brightest bulbs in the lamp. This stacks up with those girls giving birth in hotel rooms and throwing the baby away without bothering just to give it up to authorities. I mean, like the maid the next day is not going to notice that the bed and bathroom closely resemble a slaughter house after giving birth. We seem to have a really stupid element within our population these days.
Hey, Jake, you don’t seem to be reading very carefully. Most of these women don’t gain a lot of weight, they don’t look obviously pregnant, their periods don’t always stop, etc. Denial may well be a factor in some cases, particularly in younger girls, but this happens to adult women, too, even women who have had previous children.
And I have to say, this type of racist comment:
is not going to win you any friends here. Just my humble opinion, though.
I know a girl who went through this. She went to the emergency room with stomach cramps, and they said," You’re in labor." And, a couple hours later, her daughter was born. I saw her about a week before it happened, and had NO clue she was pregnant–the girl is usually about 100 pounds soaking wet, and she was maybe 115 when I saw her. I just thought she looked healthier than usual! (she was wayyy to skinny before.)
She NEVER in her life had a regular cycle…it has something to do with her having three kidneys, but I’m not sure how it works. She thought that she had put on a few pounds from all the beer she had been drinking. (she was partying every weekend through the whole thing!)
Her daughter has grown into a bright, beautiful little girl. A mischevous little imp, but absolutely adorable.
