Question from a clueless man: How could she NOT know?

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Fnord
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03 May 2021, 3:08 pm

** ANSWERS FROM WOMEN ONLY, PLEASE **

I just read a news story about a woman who was 29 weeks pregnant when she gave birth on an airplane bound for Hawai'i from Utah, and she did not know she was pregnant!  At least, that is what she claims.

How can a woman NOT know when she is pregnant, especially when she is 7+ months along?

:scratch: Seriously ... I am asking ...

Source:
 This ABC News Article 



IsabellaLinton
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03 May 2021, 3:31 pm

My grandmother didn't know she was pregnant with my dad when he was born at home. They have no idea how long the gestation was but he was born premature and underdeveloped at about 1.5 kg. My grandparents kept him alive in a roasting dish in the oven using oxygen from a welding torch.

So, stranger things have happened.

Lots of women have irregular cycles, bleed during pregnancy, and / or don't gain a lot of weight.



Joe90
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03 May 2021, 3:39 pm

I once heard of a woman who gave birth at an airport, to a healthy 8 pound baby, without knowing she was pregnant for the whole 9 months. I can't make that out either. Your body changes during pregnancy, your hormones change, surely you must get at least one symptom of pregnancy? A bigger belly than usual? More tiredness? Cravings? Sickness? Feeling the baby kicking or hiccuping or moving about in the womb? Surely pregnancy isn't as discreet as something like digestion. I understand if you are a few months gone and didn't know it, but a whole 9 months without feeling a goddamn thing? It's very perplexing.


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cbd
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03 May 2021, 3:44 pm

IsabellaLinton wrote:
My grandmother didn't know she was pregnant with my dad when he was born at home. They have no idea how long the gestation was but he was born premature and underdeveloped at about 1.5 kg. My grandparents kept him alive in a roasting dish in the oven using oxygen from a welding torch.

So, stranger things have happened.

Lots of women have irregular cycles, bleed during pregnancy, and / or don't gain a lot of weight.


Wow .. Very Interesting Family Story



OutsideView
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03 May 2021, 4:18 pm

There's no way I couldn't have known. No periods, big belly, heatburn, aching hips, always hungry, not able to eat a big meal, needing a wee every 5 minutes, feeling the baby move, feeling sick, tired all the time, puffed out after not much exercise. Apparently some people just get no (or less strong) symptoms, I can't imagine it though!


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kitesandtrainsandcats
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03 May 2021, 4:59 pm

Well, I'm not a woman and have no children, but this got my curiosity going, and I found some women to quote,
(did study pregnancy in nursing school in 1980s)
November 7, 2019 / Pregnancy & Childbirth
Can You Be Pregnant and Not Know It?
Bewilderment aside, an ob/gyn gives 7 possible reasons for a cryptic pregnancy
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/can- ... t-know-it/

Quote:
Still, it seems like every so often we hear or read about a woman not knowing she was pregnant and unexpectantly giving birth to a surprise baby.
We all gasp in wonder. How in the world is that even possible?
But according to ob/gyn Rebecca Russell, MD, it’s not entirely uncommon if the circumstances allow it.
If you’re still skeptical, here are seven reasons why a woman might not realize she’s pregnant:


Also,

Australian Model Erin Langmaid Had a Cryptic Pregnancy and Gave Birth in Her Bathroom
Not kidding. Here's how that can happen.
By Leah Groth Updated April 08, 2020
https://www.health.com/condition/pregna ... y-bathroom
Quote:
Another uncommon characteristic of Langmaid's pregnancy: She apparently didn't gain much (if any) pregnancy weight. "Although she was thin, she apparently didn’t notice nearly a 7.5 pound baby within her,” says Dr. Gersh. She notes that this is “uncommon” but “not impossible,” due to the fact that with women who are young and have strong abdominal muscles, “the baby is held tightly to their body, as if in a binder.”

“It is unusual for a full-term baby to be unsuspected in a thin woman, but when the persons with her and she herself have no idea that pregnancy is a possibility, the signs are simply missed,” she explains.

Dr. Gersh does point out, however, that any woman who is pregnant can easily be recognized as being pregnant by a medical doctor, assuming one does an examination. “The pregnancy is cryptic to the woman as she is not suspecting she is pregnant, not because it can’t be detected.”


Third reference, I like to give references in sets of 3,
https://www.womenshealthmag.com/life/a1 ... -pregnant/
A Doctor Explains How a Woman Can Go Nine Months Without Knowing She’s Pregnant
It happens more often than you’d expect.
By Esther Crain
Mar 26, 2015


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IsabellaLinton
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03 May 2021, 6:32 pm

cbd wrote:
IsabellaLinton wrote:
My grandmother didn't know she was pregnant with my dad when he was born at home. They have no idea how long the gestation was but he was born premature and underdeveloped at about 1.5 kg. My grandparents kept him alive in a roasting dish in the oven using oxygen from a welding torch.

So, stranger things have happened.

Lots of women have irregular cycles, bleed during pregnancy, and / or don't gain a lot of weight.


Wow .. Very Interesting Family Story


I know right? My granddad was such a hero to think of what to do. My grandmother was in shock and unable to respond logically, so he likely would have died without the oxygen. My dad's older sister was born exactly 11.5 months before him, and apparently my grandparents weren't 'active' for quite a few months after her birth, so he was likely only about 6 or 7 months along. That's pretty incredible given it was the 1930s.

I've never seen a picture of my grandmother in those years so I don't know if she was over or underweight, but considering she gave birth to my aunt 11.5 prior it's likely she still had a bit of a belly when she fell pregnant with my dad? I have no idea if she missed periods or not, but if she did it's possible that she thought it was from childbirth / breastfeeding my aunt.



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04 May 2021, 9:36 am

Actually, it's much more common than many people think. Not noticing is usually a combination of many things:

When it comes to periods, many women have very irregular ones and some even stop having them completely due to being on the pill. If you tend to go months without having a period anyway, the lack of them won't make you think you're pregnant. Women who are anemic also miss periods sometimes, so when they skip a month or two, they could chalk it up to that at first.

As for not noticing stomach growing, there are usually two explanations: one is that the woman is already quite overweight, which makes it harder to see and what she can see is likely to be filed up as just gaining weight. This is especially true if her pregnancy happens to be the kind where the stomach grows more to the sides than to the front. I think which way the stomach starts growing depends somehow on the position of the womb... and speaking of that, reason two is that some women have a womb that somehow leans back, causing the stomach to not exactly grow all that much. The wife of one of my cousins apparently has it like that; she was already seven months pregnant before one could see it (she knew she was pregnant, but people who weren't told could never have figured how far along she was.)

As for morning sickness, baby kicking etc. Not everyone gets sick. And if someone has a bit of a habit of getting sick, like if they have a weak stomach, they might think that it's just acting up again and think that that's why they're throwing up all the time. Likewise, they could explain the kicks as stomach aches.

Of course, if a woman has sex with a man and still has all the body parts needed for a pregnancy, it'd be wise to check every time any symptoms that fit pregnancy appear and hasn't been explained by something else, but for one reason or the other many don't do this.



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05 May 2021, 6:58 am

My mom had PCOS which caused irregular periods, so initially she thought she had the flu. She figured it out (she was trying after all) but estimated her dates wrong (I arrived full-term "early"). I am a "bleeder" in general, so had light "periods" for most of my pregnancies, which threw me off. From the perspective of movement: I wouldn't have known I was my pregnant with my first; I noticed significant movement once in the entire pregnancy. Not sure if that was my child's position, personality, double placenta, my fantastic abs (not!) etc. I've seen this occur with many medical conditions... where a human can rationalize (delude ourselves about) near anything. Two friends recently had heart attacks and in retrospect had all the stereotypical signs beforehand, but had "reasons" for all of them --- him "my left arm is hurting b/c I typically don't rake this much" (I couldn't be having a heart attack); her "my neck is stiff and my stomach is upset b/c [I did these unusual things]..." (I couldn't be having a heart attack). I recently realized I've had life-long cycle-related migraines, but for decades I thought my hormones were triggering low immunity and I was getting colds that caused headaches, nausea and sometimes blurry vision and brain fog --- now in retrospect - duh. My mom had severe migraines and was a pro at invalidating my experiences and truths in general, so I didn't recognize my mild to moderate ones.

On a tangent (the woman knows but is convinced by authorities otherwise), I once told a doctor I thought I was pregnant and he said ----I kid you not--- "no, you are not". So I was like "oh, OK". In retrospect, I was pregnant (and lost the pregnancy). I had another friend who thought she was pregnant but the hcG test came back negative, so she was told it was in her mind --- come to find out she's one of the few women who doesn't produce the beta hCG, but produced a different type --- it was there, but the doctors don't measure that one b/c it's uncommon. It didn't end well for her either. I can imagine a young woman briefly wondering if she's pregnant, being told (or even imagining being told) she's not by a domineering parent or boyfriend, or simply scared and unable to process the concept and hence deluding herself.



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08 May 2021, 1:04 pm

kitesandtrainsandcats wrote:
Well, I'm not a woman and have no children, but this got my curiosity going, and I found some women to quote,
(did study pregnancy in nursing school in 1980s)
November 7, 2019 / Pregnancy & Childbirth
Can You Be Pregnant and Not Know It?
Bewilderment aside, an ob/gyn gives 7 possible reasons for a cryptic pregnancy
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/can- ... t-know-it/
Quote:
Still, it seems like every so often we hear or read about a woman not knowing she was pregnant and unexpectantly giving birth to a surprise baby.
We all gasp in wonder. How in the world is that even possible?
But according to ob/gyn Rebecca Russell, MD, it’s not entirely uncommon if the circumstances allow it.
If you’re still skeptical, here are seven reasons why a woman might not realize she’s pregnant:


Also,

Australian Model Erin Langmaid Had a Cryptic Pregnancy and Gave Birth in Her Bathroom
Not kidding. Here's how that can happen.
By Leah Groth Updated April 08, 2020
https://www.health.com/condition/pregna ... y-bathroom
Quote:
Another uncommon characteristic of Langmaid's pregnancy: She apparently didn't gain much (if any) pregnancy weight. "Although she was thin, she apparently didn’t notice nearly a 7.5 pound baby within her,” says Dr. Gersh. She notes that this is “uncommon” but “not impossible,” due to the fact that with women who are young and have strong abdominal muscles, “the baby is held tightly to their body, as if in a binder.”

“It is unusual for a full-term baby to be unsuspected in a thin woman, but when the persons with her and she herself have no idea that pregnancy is a possibility, the signs are simply missed,” she explains.

Dr. Gersh does point out, however, that any woman who is pregnant can easily be recognized as being pregnant by a medical doctor, assuming one does an examination. “The pregnancy is cryptic to the woman as she is not suspecting she is pregnant, not because it can’t be detected.”


Third reference, I like to give references in sets of 3,
https://www.womenshealthmag.com/life/a1 ... -pregnant/
A Doctor Explains How a Woman Can Go Nine Months Without Knowing She’s Pregnant
It happens more often than you’d expect.
By Esther Crain
Mar 26, 2015


Interesting links! Thanks for sharing, kites. Had no idea that you once studied nursing! I did as well.

I’ve no doubt at all that certain women wouldn’t know, as nothing surprises me, as there are such extremes in both women and pregnancy. I was at the extreme end too.



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09 May 2021, 1:35 am

Reasons women wouldn't know they are pregnant:

They have irregular periods so them missing a period would not mean anything.

They are fat and they may not notice their belly getting bigger and they may be losing weight at the same time so their weight never goes up and if they do gain weight, they may think they have just simply put on some more weight.

They may mistake their pregnancy symptoms as them having other medical issues and if they are older, they may think it's all due to aging. Also pregnant women can get chin hair and other extra body hair, hyper pigmentation and the woman may mistake these as her part of aging.


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