Yeah, whatever, Skippy. Go back to your peanut butter selling. 
Dangerosa - single, by the strict definition, yes. But I’ve been in the same LTR for 13 years now. I’m in a very stable relationship. But I don’t want to have children, ever, so I am afraid.
And yes, I have broached him getting snipped. We’re in our mid-thirties. I think he needs time to get used to it and I’m not going to push it until he’s ready.
Bless you, pudytat72, I’ve been waiting for someone to say that.
As far as the cervical bleeding/spotting, whatever - I’m actually pretty good about noticing and following up on medical stuff, especially since I have a couple of health conditions that bear monitoring.
If the bleeding had been different or unusual in any way, I’d have been getting it checked out, especially since I’ve had a history of abnormal Paps. It was just…a period. shrug I don’t generally have cramps, and bleeding for 1-3 days and then stopping is pretty normal for me.
For what it’s worth, ZipperJJ, I wasn’t on the pill because it didn’t really agree with me, so that might relax you a bit. 
When I was in my 20s I worked in a hotel and we had a housekeeper that refused to admit she was pregnant. “I’m not pregnant, I’m just fat, I’ve been eating too much.” About 9 months later she takes a week off and comes back thin.
She still refused to admit she was pregnant. No one knows what happened to kid, if she kept it, or gave it away or what.
I have a hard time believing that women don’t know they are pregnant, but rather they are choosing to ignore it. Like when the bill collector comes. You know you didn’t pay, you ignored it 
Did you read the thread? :dubious:
Don’t be influenced by ads for pregnancy tests, which would have us believe that women pee on a stick every time they have sex.
In the military back about '60 or so a friends wife and pinochle partner of my wife had to get a physical to go to Germany with her husband.
They found a large tumor and a full term boy. She had no idea she was pregnant. She was a large woman and her youngest previous child was in grade school.
I guarantee you I didn’t ignore a damn thing, much less choose to ignore anything.
Had I had any suspicion, I would have done the stick thing or gone in to the doctor a hell of a lot sooner than I did. I may not have actively wanted a pregnancy, but I don’t play games with my health, I’m not “mentally ill,” I’m fully cognizant of the symptoms of pregnancy and increased risks as one gets closer to 40, and I would have made sure that our health was taken care of. I was VERY fortunate to have a good outcome for both of us.
Re: the stuff about cervical bleeding–makes sense…I’ve just never been pregnant, so I just assumed menstrual cramps were totally different from anything else. I mean, for me, I never get the kinds of cramps I do during my period at any other time (except on odd occasions when I run–very rare though).
These are my worst fears on crack!
I think this is very important.
I’m married. My husband and I tried for a year to get pregnant, with no results. I decided the obsessive tracking + semi-irregular periods was just stressing me out. I was going through some serious work stress as well, which may have worsened the problem. We’ve decided, before we get into medical intervention, to try it “the natural way”. . . ie, no birth control, no schedules, just see what happens. I don’t track when I ovulate and I won’t pee on a stick unless am at least a week past the top end of my period timing range.
In truth I don’t worry about it that much-- we’d be delighted by any pregnancy, but I’m not obsessing over it like when I was single (or trying to conceive). Low symptoms and some cervical bleeding and I could be pregnant and not know it for quite a while, I suppose. I worry about it a lot less than I did when I was 19 and pregnancy was life-ruining.
Many married couples, at certain points, get to where pregnancy is not a huge concern one way or the other. A baby would be fine, but so would not having a baby. So you just keep a general idea of your regularity as is normal for you, and only react to changes that you notice. . . which you may not.
(Also. . . when I was trying to get pregnant, I thought everything was a pregnancy symptom. It was only once I was paying attention that I noticed how sometimes you have to pee more, have sore breasts with PMS, feel randomly tired or randomly nauseous, feel bloated, have gas, crave certain foods. . . just 'cause. Now I’m a lot more skeptical of my own “symptoms”)
Yeah, all the books and I’ve read and doctors I’ve talked to specifically say, “*Don’t *freak out if you feel like your period may be starting soon. Early-pregnancy cramps are normal.” And sure e-damn-nough, they feel just like that. My periods have always been pretty heavy, so I personally wouldn’t be confused by breakthrough bleeding (though I haven’t had any), but I can totally see how with that plus the cramps, someone might.
Also, I did a little searching, and found this article about another one of these cases that happened last year. This woman had been pregnant several times before, so she had even more reason to know what that would feel like, and *still *didn’t know. The photos are pretty crazy - compare 4 and 6, of her earlier pregnancies, with 9 of the “surprise” one. It’s kind of hard to see, and granted, she’s only five or six months along there, but she says she gained only 10 pounds total.
I was hoping to find images from the show. They use actors for reenactments, but they also show photos of the actual women from right before they gave birth. In some cases, they’re just generally heavy and you can see how a baby could be “hidden”, but occasionally the woman will be really slim - I believe there was one woman in a bikini - and it just seems like there’s no way in hell a donut could be in there unnoticed, much less a baby.
I read a story about the woman, and I got the impression that she knew but was trying to keep it a secret from others, including her husband and parents. The couple had two other children, both very young. Very sad.
Apparently (will try to find a cite, though it may have been on TV) women who have had at least one other child are more likely to not know they are pregnant until giving birth or very late on in pregnancy. They assume they know what being pregnant feels like, so because their symptoms aren’t similar to those they associate with pregnancy, they don’t make the connection (especially if they’ve only recently given birth and are still getting back to normal).
Lots of women don’t have periods that come at regular intervals, follow a formula, or involve much bleeding. Especially those on hormonal BC, or those who have conditions that can cause infertility (and are therefore are less likely to suspect pregnancy if they have any body changes).
Even women who do have somewhat regular periods often do not pay much attention to them.
And of course vaginal bleeding is fairly common during pregnancy from many causes and can go beyond spotting. Women can miscarriage at an early stage and not distinguish it from a period, for instance. You can miscarry one or more multiples and still be pregnant.
My period is highly predictable and I notice every detail, write things down, and keep track of dates. I have had two pregnancy ‘scares’ - the only times in the past few years my cycle went longer than 34 days. I tested when I was a week late - negative both times, and got my period shortly after. That’s just me, though.
Anyway, everyone should watch that TLC show. This shit happens to normal women, and often skinny ones (who don’t show at all) and those who have other children. It only features women who didn’t know until they went into labor, and almost every one delivers at full-term (37 weeks or longer).
I only know of this show because it is featured on The Soup a lot, but I still raise my eyebrows at some of the stories. Like the women who had her baby on the toliet and thought she was just constipated. She said she felt a “pop,” felt relief and then thought her BM was done, but then found herself “attached to the toliet.” :dubious: Really?
That was why I missed my first trimester. I had sore breasts - but I’d had them before and not been pregnant. I had some morning sickness, but I’d had that before and not been pregnant.
Sorry for the confusion, I seriously thought I scanned the thread to make sure no one here had experienced this before posting a pragnent babby reference.
Yeah…wouldn’t you feel that something was coming out of your vagina, and not your bottom? Though I guess you do have BMs during labor, but wouldn’t you also notice the huge head filling your vagina?
Some of the stories on that show make me quite dubious, but I can totally see how people don’t look pregnant because I was one of them. I never ‘popped’, I wore the same jeans from pre-pregnancy as I did during and my stomach never got big like you can tell, just firmer (poke at your belly, if you’re like me you have some give, well there was a lot less give at the end of my pregnancy and my waist was less defined but I just looked fat… not in the face, just the belly).
I was also about two months along before I clued in, in the end I went to the clinic 3 times and not once did they give me a pregnancy test or ask me questions along those lines to maybe make me think that I was, the third time I went in an demanded one… (I may have noticed earlier but for a lot of factors. Stress of my living situation, sick in general not just nausea, working nights and school during the day. Wasn’t until I was complaining to Mom of how I felt that she said ‘maybe you’re pregnant’ that I clued in.)
I get cervical bleeding and the only difference with menstruation is how long it lasts. Mind you, my periods are very light (only one heavy day).
this must have been a traumatic and frightening thing to have gone through alone and doubly so if she was mentally challenged or mentally ill.
What a sad story.
I worked with a skinny woman who didn’t show at all, too. She looked like she had maybe a little bloating, like you’d get with water retention, by the end of her term, and produced a full-term, healthy weight baby. There is a very, very wide spectrum of “normal” for human reproduction.