Unknown Pregnancy

In yesterday’s paper, there was an aritcle about a 21 year old woman who was arrested for burying what she said was her still-born child. The child was found still alive in a shallow grave. During questioning at the hospital, she claimed that she did not know of her pregnancy until the child “arrived”. My question is ,is it possible for a woman to go full term and actually not know or suspect that she is pregnant? Any Moms or Doctors care to weigh in on this? Any other cases which are actually believable?

certainly possible. I remember during my residency being called to deliver a baby while mom was being wheeled down the hall, with the head pushing out between her legs, saying “I’m not pregnant!” After I helped finish the delivery, and held the baby up to show it to her she said “that didn’t come out of me! It’s not mine!”

The lesson I learned is that denial is very strong! Given a woman who doesn’t want to acknowledge the possibility that she’s pregnant, and who is large enough so that changes in body habitus can be conveniently hidden or ignored, it’s all entirely possible. Sad, but all too common.

A former co-worker’s wife didn’t know she was pregnant until she gave birth in her toilet at home. Hubby didn’t know either. He thought she had gained a little weight over an inactive winter. She is very petite and the doctors postulated that she carried the baby very very low in her pelvic cavity.

They were on Montel and Geraldo… I wouldn’t have thought it possible either, but these are two highly intelligent and eminently sane people that I happen to know personally.

A friend of mine recently went to the emergency room with a case of severe cramping brought on (she thought) by a case of chronic constipation. After the doctor examined her, she was informed that she was dialated to four centimeters!

She had no idea that she was pregnant. She and her husband had been having some problems (maritally and financially) and they had to decide pretty quick whether or not to give the baby up for adoption. They decided to keep him and little Matthew Jacob is doing fine now!

(When he was born, he had a lung infection because his mother was extremely constipated during the gestation and he was “poisoned” (Dr’s words).)

Jesus, Qadgop – “That didn’t come out of me”? Obviously, a serious case of denial. Next time my kid pisses me off, that’s what I’m gonna say to him – “Hey, you didn’t come out of me.” :slight_smile: Anyway, you don’t happen to know what became of the baby, do you? Did the mother take it home?

As one who has been pregnant twice, my take on women not knowing they are pregnant is they are in SERIOUS denial or they are SERIOUSLY stupid.
Come on, how could you not know? Gee, no period the last couple months? Tired? Throwing up? Gaining weight? Your belly sticking out? The baby moving and kicking?

Not all women have regular periods–therefore they don’t necessarily notice that they’ve missed. I had a roommate who would skip her periods for months at a time due to stress, poor diet, etc.
Also–older women may think it’s early menopause.

Now–I still think it’s odd that you don’t notice–but I can see in some cases you might not. Some women barely show when they’re pregnant, some women do not experience any morning sickness. Pregnancies are different for every woman. If you’ve been having fertility problems or using birth control that failed it might seem such a weird concept that you were pregnant that you could find rationalizations for the changes your body did undergo.

I know someone who did not know she was pregnant until she was 4 months along. She found out because she was experiencing severe back pain. She went to the hospital and found out she had a kidney infection AND that she was 4 months along.

She thought she had just gained a few pounds. Also, she continued to have her period up until the 4th month. At the time she found out she was pregnant she had only been about a week late.

I would like to add, however, that it would have become obvious to her in a few more months even without the emergency room visit. At that point she was more Pregnant shaped then gained a little weight shaped.

My former tenant said that had she not developed a “baby belly” (which wasn’t really very big) she never would have known she was pregnant. She had ZERO symptoms of pregnancy. Not one! She was actually disappointed with the whole experience.

If someone carried in an unusual fashion, I can see where she may not know she’s carrying. This girl went 9 months symptom free, and on occassion she expressed to me that she sometimes doubted if she was preg. Very odd!
Zette

She is very petite, has never had a regular period, didn’t feel tired, sick to her stomach or overweight…

You’re right, many women “just know” that they’re pregnant. But some don’t. Just because it was obvious to you doesn’t mean it’s obvious to everyone who gets pregnant.

What’s even wilder is that this is her second child we’re talking about. The doctors further postulated that she was able to carry the baby so low because she cracked her pelvis/tailbone or something when she had her first child and that gave her pelvis some “give” that it didn’t have before.

I couldn’t believe this at first, either, but have come to the conclusion that women’s pregnancy experiences must be very difficult.

I can certainly understand misinterpreting a lot of the symptoms and maybe babies are carried differently. The weirdest thing to me is not recognizing the movement of the babies. I can only think these babies must have been on the small and inactive side. Mine were really beating me up by the end–you could see knees and elbows moving around from the outside.

That was supposed to be “different,” not “difficult.” Freudian slip.

My wife worked a number of years at St. David’s Hospital in Austin, TX and I can tell you from the stories she would bring home that some of the people brought in from outlying (i.e. uneducated) areas of the city, especially those who were young and religious, were often in complete denial of their pregnancy when she saw them as late as 6-7 months along. They just assumed they were gaining weight.

A wife of someone that my husband used to work with actually had a 1 1/2 week warning that the baby was coming. She had been diagnosed as infertile many years before. She had actually gone to the doctor during her pregnancy about her stomach feeling bloated, etc. and been diagnosed with gas and heartburn or something like that. Anyway, something made her go back to the doctor one more time (I’m guessing Braxton-Hicks contractions) and this time the doctor found the baby.

Ok, obviously this woman was large, both in height and weight. (For average women like me, there is nowhere for baby to grow but out. You lucky tall women.) She knew she was gaining weight, but associated it with the stomach problems that had been diagnosed earlier and her strange appetite of late. It can happen.

Now when I interned in the adoption agency we got to hear all kinds of stories. The more immature the young woman, the more capable she was of complete denial.

Plus, I had a friend that lost her first baby from a premature birth due to a weak cervix. Then her husband thought she gained a little weight and she was a couple weeks late for her period so she made an appointment with her doctor. When she went in for her appointment, she ended up in the hospital because she was 5 months pregnant and had started to dialate. With her next one (3 months after #2 was born) she “figured it out” much quicker. I think she just wouldn’t let herself hope that she was pregnant after the pain of losing the first one, but she says she kept having periods all that time and that’s why she didn’t think she was.

I knew a woman whose three year old son was a victim
of murder/suicide by his father a week after she
conceived another child. She didn’t even think
about her symptoms (which would have probably been
attributed to stress if she had) until she started
looking very pregnant.

She now has a healthy son who unfortunately does not
have a big brother.

I didn’t realize I was pregnant with my son until I was about 3 months along. I had always had very irregular periods and the “off” feeling I experienced, I put down to stress. If I’d been a little less educated about pregnancy (it gradually dawned on me that I wasn’t all of a sudden sprouting boobs), I could have easily gone to 5 months (when I started showing) without knowing.

My sister hid her pregancy from our family for 8 months! Seriously, if a friend of hers hadn’t spilled the beans, we would have gotten a big suprise. She’s overweight, very big-boned and carried in her hips. So, I can see how people can be pregnant and nobody around them suspects.

As for the denial, I can buy that, especially in the case of younger women. It’s probably a lot easier for them to dismiss their sypmtoms rather than deal with an unwanted pregnancy. And given my own experience, I can see how a symptomless pregnancy can go unnoticed, even by an older, more experienced woman.

I see several women commenting about how it’s possible to ignore the cessation of periods and the weight gain, but how about the baby’s movements (the well-known “kicking”)? Doesn’t every baby do that?

Several years ago I was in a support group, and one of the women (I’ll call her “Sue”) told the following story:

Sue grew up in a very rural mountain area, lots of poverty and little education. Most of the people in this area were part of a very weird fundamentalist church. When she was around 12 years old, her best friend (also 12, I’ll call her “Janey”) started getting really sick, throwing up, gaining weight, etc. Neither one of these girls had any CLUE where babies come from or what might be happening to this child. (Apparently the church forbade discussing sex, especially with children.) The two girls were out playing in the woods one day when the Janey started to give birth. In the group, Sue related how both of them were crying and terrified and had no idea what was happening. When the baby came out, Sue thought it was dead because it wasn’t breathing. She didn’t know what the umbilical cord was, only that the baby was attached to her friend. Sue found an old, rusty tin can and used it cut the cord. They were both so afraid of getting in trouble that they tried to conceal the birth, and they left the baby’s body covered in leaves and went home.

Janey died a few days later from infection brought on by the birth, and Sue believed she poisoned her friend by cutting the cord with a rusty can.

Although nothing was said at the time, Sue was later able to piece together the facts based on things Janey had told her before she gave birth and died. Janey sometimes mentioned that a relative of hers (the preacher of the church) played special games with her, but she wouldn’t give many details. Sue figured out that the man had been the father of the child.

Although I heard this from Sue over 10 years ago, just retelling this has brought me to tears. This poor woman still blames herself for the death of Janey and the baby. How tragic that two children died because of secrets, ignorance, and that evil man.

I hope this isn’t a hijack, because I know the OP question was about adult women.

Arnold - each baby has different levels of activities and are different sizes. In my case, my son was 10 pounds, 12 ouches at birth ( :eek: ) and trust me, I felt EVERYTHING (including his hiccups).

HOWEVER, if the baby is small, and relatively inactive, it would be possible to dismiss such feelings as gas or whatever. ESPECIALLY if the woman has never had a baby before.

It’s easy to figure out “oh, that must be the baby moving” if you’re expecting to feel it. If you have no idea you might be pregnant, you wouldn’t necessarily give it another thought.

I work with a lady who told me that she didn’t know that she was pregnant until she was 6 months along. She said that she was on the pill and kept getting her periods. She noticed that she was putting on some weight, but never thought for a moment that she was pregnant. She finally had so many “stomach pains” (baby kicking) that she went to the hospital, and found out that she was 6 months pregnant. She lost the baby a week later. She was a reasonably intelligent woman, so I assume that she really had no reason to suspect she was pregnant.

On a similar note, I heard that my mom had her periods when she was pregnant with me until she was 4 or 5 months along, and didn’t know that she was pregnant for that time either.

One more story… One day at work (a few years ago), someone told me that Jesse, one of our female regular pool players, had just had her baby. The entire staff was shocked! She was a really slim woman, and no one even suspected that she was pregnant. After I thought about it, I realized that she had been wearing baggy clothes lately, but nothing even tipped me off that there was more under the baggy clothes. Yikes! I’ve had four kids, and I’m telling you, she did NOT look pregnant.