Now this is a new phenomenon to me:
Woman has baby 3 days after learning of pregnancy
whoa.
My niece’s mother (long story) claims she didn’t know she was pregnant until she had horrible stomach cramps and went to the emergency room. She was in labor. This was her second pregnancy (my niece was her first).
I have a hard time believing it but she really doesn’t have a reason to lie about it.
Here’s another one:
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/news/41102_news_surprisebaby.html
Both of the women had very premature babies.
I checked Snopes and googled, and I can’t find any stories of women who have had full-term (or almost full-term) surprise births. I’ve heard lots of stories, but would love to know if there is any truth to them.
Ok, I can accomodate the full term didn’t know she was preganant story. I have a coworker/friend that has two beautiful little girls (one is 2 1/2 and the other is 7 weeks). She never knew she was pregnant…Either time.
She is already heavy set. She doesn’t stop having a period. She doesn’t have morning sickeness or cravings. Her weight doesn’t change. Well, this lst time, she was losing weight. There is nothing that indicates to her that she is pregnant. She never looks pregnant.
You know how some people can look at someone and tell they are pregnant. When I first got pregnant, this one guy looked at me and knew immediately. I hadn’t told anyone yet at work. He worked with her the whole time she was pregnant, and didn’t know until the week she had the baby.
The first time, she worked in a heavy lifting job all day, moving rolls of paper, and took tylenol and advil all day for the pain in her side. She was taken to the hospital by her mom that night due to what they figured was her apendix. The doctor checked her out and said you are having a baby right now. She pushed all of 10 minutes or so. The baby was around 8+ lbs.
There are a lot of psycological issues involved with this, which I won’t go into right now. She had therapy and they watched her very closely in the hospital. She is well attached to her though, now.
A couple of months ago, she called into work sick. She had gone to the hospital with back pain. She was in labor again. She called her boyfriend and said she was in the hospital. He asked what was wrong, she said I just had a 9+ lb baby girl. He was shocked. We (the mom, the dad and I) have talked a lot about that day. It was outrageous to hear about him telling his family. Atleast her family had been through this once before.
Anyway, tests are being run on her now. The suspicion that the doctor has is that her organs are not in their normal locations and that would be why she never shows signs. They also told her it was extremely rare for someone to repeat, so they are finding her very interesting.
I know her. She is bright and honest and strong. She is not just in denial or hiding the pregnancy.
I promise, You CANNOT tell she is pregnant. I share an office with her. You can’t tell.
Jkayla, that is truly amazing! I’m glad that she has been able to bond with her babies.
Woah! That is some story!
I asked because I am at 38 weeks, and I was actually thinking about this today in the shower. Then this thread appeared. Weird. I was thinking that it would be impossible not to realize that something was amiss when you felt a massive kicking from inside your belly. When you laid on your back and saw your stomach moving around of its own accord. Even if a person is really heavy and doesn’t “show,” I still couldn’t believe that they could miss all the kicking and moving and squirming. But maybe some babies don’t move around all that much. I dunno. I guess it’s possible after all.
Thanks for sharing the story.
This is the sort of horror story that keeps me awake at nights, and forces me to run pregnancy tests every two months, no matter what my menstruation is like.
Thank you, I’m not going to sleep tonight now. This is the only nightmare worse than the ones where Mr Goo is in a horrific vehicle accident.
My friend’s brother and his wife had a baby earlier this year. They didn’t discover that she was pregnant until she was 5 months along.
My aunt’s friend became a grandmother unexpectedly quite a few years ago when her daughter went into labour. I believe she was full term. She was a nurse, and hadn’t suspected she was pregnant. It was a complete shock to everyone.
Yeah, this kind of story scares the hell out of me.
Thank heavens I’m so small I’d probably notice pretty quickly. I’m so paranoid that I take my pills at the exact same time every day almost to the minute.
My sister worked with someone who didn’t know she was pregnant until she was giving birth in the hospital. I don’t know all of the details first hand, but maybe I can talk her into posting the story later.
How can you be pregnant and still slough off your uterine walls?
That’s the same question I’ve always had when I hear stories about someone who didn’t know she was pregnant “and she still had her period!”
No, she didn’t. Your period is when, as matt_mcl pointed out, you slough off your uterine lining. If you’re having monthly bleeding while pregnant, it’s due to some other cause, and I’d love to know what that is. Are they having monthly spotting? Wouldn’t you notice if your normal period turned into a couple dribs of pink stuff for, oh, several months?
I just have a hard time understanding how a woman – even an overweight woman with irregular cycles – can be so blasted out of touch with her own body as to not realize there’s something alive in there.
I saw that in the paper today, since I live in IC and work at that very hospital!!! I also can not understand how some women can be pregnant and not know it. I, as a looney with OCD, sometimes worry that I am. Then I remember that it’s been since January since I got any and I’m 120 lbs…and I go “Oh yeah, duh.” But I still worry…
The doctor explained why she didn’t feel kicking when she and the family asked. He said that most babies move at night, and she probably was asleep and didn’t notice. I think the uterus is more towards her back than other women, so maybe the movement when small may be construed as, I don’t know, a muscle spasm. They say it is the location of her organs. I couldn’t miss one of my little one’s kicks for anything in this world. If I didn’t know I was pregnant and had felt mine moving, we would have been to the doctor saying ‘there is something in there, help’.
I don’t know about why she can still have a period, but she is not the first person I have heard say that. It may be that it is not a full period and that some of the slouging occurs but enough is left to not interfere with the pregancy.
I am one of those people with irregular periods when not on birth control. It took us a year to get pregnant. Everytime I didn’t have a reasonable period, I was taking a pregnancy test. It was actually quite depressing doing that, but I atleast I knew I wasn’t pregnant.
And some people just are not in touch with there bodies. They don’t look at themselves and think about things. I do. I know when things change.
As for her attaching to the girls, she has done great. I really worried about her the first time. The grandmother was really involved with the first one. The mom spent last year (while I was pregnant) asking me questions and trying to learn what I was going through. She felt some of the Tygr cubs kicks. She wanted the experience. By the end of last year, I was noticing that she was attaching more to her daughter. She had put her in a twice a week play group/half day daycare so she could play with other kids and the grandmother could do some errands. She cried and didn’t want to leave her. Looking back, I think the hormones must have been helping, but I had not thought of that then. Now that she has the new baby, she is well attached to both. She is dealing very well emotionally.
I would think it odd if the hospital was not working so hard to explain and study her, but they are.
The location of the placenta can affect the ability of the woman to feel the baby. If the placenta is in the front then the baby will mostly be kicking the woman’s back and it is near impossible for her to feel it. I would think it would be kind of strange for one woman to have two pregnancys where the placenta attached to the front of the uterus though.
I, too, have never had any problems feeling any of my kids. The current one seems to kick like a horse (sorry baby). It will all be over in a couple of weeks and I will miss it. I can’t imagine not getting the chance to feel the baby move. It is so exciting.
Sorry for the ramble, chalk it up to “mommy brain”. 
My mom’s friend had this happen to her around 1970. She was a rather heavy-set woman, hadn’t been pregnant before and was trying to get pregnant. I think her period stopped or she only had some spotting. She went to the doctor wondering if she was pregnant, and he said she wasn’t. This was before regular fetal ultrasounds, and I’m not sure what kind of testing was involved. She didn’t gain that much weight. My family’s dog was always very protective of pregnant women, and sat by her on her visits to our house; my mom would tease her that this meant she was pregnant. Then a surprising phone call from her friend - she’d delivered a baby. As far as I know, the baby was healthy; the mom had been trying to take care of herself since she wanted to get pregnant.
Back in 1976 or so, I was working in a Pizza hut when a very stunned looking couple came in with a very tiny baby in a carrier. When I asked all the usual questions about boy/girl, how old, they said three days…I was a bit surprised they would stop at Pizza Hut on the way home from the hospital. When I made a little joke about hospital food, they just spilled out their story. The wife was a tall, large girl…she had been taking medication for a kidney problem for about a year. Her periods had become very spotty, but the doctor said it was from the medication. She hadn’t gained any significant weight, and three days before had gone to the emergency room from work with severe back pains, only to be told she was about to give birth. She had an adorable little 7+lb. girl, who had been very quiet since birth, but had tested fine on the APGAR. They were both still numb with the shock of it all…seemed to have no idea what to do next. It was the first time I’d seen new parents not have any interaction at all with a new baby…they didn’t look at her, or fuss over her, or anything. Just plopped her down in a carrier the hospital had given them, and ate their pizza. I have worried for years about what became of them, and if they ever bonded as a family. Even total strangers had more interest in the baby than they had at that moment. Such a shock.
I’ve got to chime in here as well.
They’re some nearby neighbors of ours.
The little baby you see there is about 14 months old when the picture was taken. She’s a few months younger than Kate, they’re pals.
But Susan (the woman) found out 3 days after the party that she was pregnant. 7 months!
She’d never gotten her period back because she was breastfeeding and quite confusedly admitted that she’d never felt a thing. She began suspecting about 2 weeks prior to the party (Halloween 2001) and checked and bang-o! Inbound bundle of joy!
Good thing she checked, too! Little Andy showed up 2 weeks prior to ETA. But boy, were Susan and Ken shocked!
I quote, “Never again!” And she took permanent steps.
I am at 38 weeks too and I can’t imagine not noticing the alien movements in your gut. I personally am growing the new Jackie Chan!
If she were REALLY overweight, she probably would have had irregular periods to begin with. And more than likely, she is like most overweight women who avoid regular gynecologist and doctor checkups like the plague.
All of these surprise babies are lucky to have been healthy. Either that or I have been avoiding all medicine, alcohol, empty sugar, and caffeine for nothing! Especially the woman who took advil…egad!
Many years ago, I worked with a couple who had decided they didn’t want to have children. She was a large woman - at least 6 feet tall and well over 200 pounds. One evening, she started having terrible stomach pain - her husband was at work so her parents took her to the emergency room. After checking her out, the doctor informed her that she was in labour and was about to give birth. She had no idea she was pregnant. Apparently, her periods were quite irregular and she never felt any symptoms. Her mom called the woman’s husband at work and said, “Guess what? Remember those stomach pains? It was labour and you’re a dad!” He didn’t believe it at first (who would?), but he indeed was the father of a small, but healthy baby.
(btw, I’m lolagranola’s sister).