According to new studies conducted in Germany and Ireland (and reported in the Times Online), about 1 in 600 women gets into labor without knowing that they were pregnant in the first place. Seriously! That's a lot more than the sensational news stories you hear about once in a while of women giving birth in their bathroom, or even the TLC show I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant...
This totally, totally baffles me. And the most incredible thing is these women do not fall into a single category, like for instance large women whose weight gain is not much apparent, or very young girls who perhaps have little knowledge of their own bodies' functioning and no one to turn to. They are career women, women in their forties, women who already have children! Even Cherie Blair only learned she was pregnant with her youngest son in her third trimester...
What's happening then? Don't they have symptoms, or feel the baby move, or something? Well, apparently not always. In an episode of the TLC show, I once saw a super skinny girl who gained all of seven pounds, and had just the tiniest "bloated" belly (seven may be extreme but my friend Chantale only gained 17 pounds for each of her three pregnancies and was not showing much). The girl on the show, who was a singer for a rock band -and smoking and drinking throughout-, said she was feeling a little sick, but thought she had come up with the flu or something, and added that her periods had always been irregular. Once she went into labor, she thought she had appendicitis.
The article brings an interesting twist though: a certain number of these women are not so much "unaware" as they are "in denial" of their pregnancy. "The absence of many physical symptoms of pregnancy, inexperience, general inattentiveness to bodily cues, intense psychological conflicts about the pregnancy, and external stresses can contribute to the denial in otherwise well-adjusted women," a study points out, although I still have a hard time believing it. Either way, they must be in for a bit of a shock, but then, the article says the outcome is usually not much different for such children than for those who were expected.
I still think this couldn't have happened to me... Do you?
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Who knew? (Well, not them, I guess)
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8 comment(s):
That's really unbelievable but I've heard of it too. I couldn't imagine that happening to me! I'm way too self-aware for that to ever happen. lol
That's wild! I can't imagine that happening to me either. There's no way I could go that long without thinking something must be up. I wonder if something's happening to inflate that number because I can't fathom 1 in 600 not knowing!
Seems impossible to me, especially if you've been pregnant before...but one thing I have learned as a mom is not to pooh pooh others' experiences. (Not saying you are.) It usually ends up with me in the same boat. :)
I can't believe it, but I guess it happens. It happened to an aquaintance/friend. She doesn't menstruate regularly because she's a runner. When she gained a bit of weight in her "pouch" she visited the doctor. I presume she was thinking it was endometriosis or cysts, based on her family history.
And what do you know, she was 4 months pregnant.
Oh, and luckily she's a health nut and doesn't drink much. Her healthy daughter was born in November.
My mom's best friend and my cousin both didn't know! My moms bff had light periods all the way through, she found out when she went to her doctor because she was very tired all the time, this was also her 2nd child!
My cousin was only 13 and her stomach was bloated and hard so the doctor thought she might have a tumor, nope she was 8 months pregnant. (I think though my cousin knew and just lied to her family.)
1 in 600 seems about right, even though it does seem a bit crazy!
This scares me a lot! I've always wondered if I would know something was up if I was pregnant. I mean, there has to be something different, right? You have to feel something?
Looking forward to the day when we actually start trying and I am actively looking for symptoms (and not just in a worried, I'm late kind of way)!
No way could this happen to me. I think just about every feeling I have is a sign of an unplanned pregnancy.
Typical conversation:
C: "I'm always hungry every five minutes, right?
N: "Yep."
C: "Ok, good."
N: "Why?"
C: "Just... I keep thinking I might be pregnant."
Repeat ad nauseum with various "symptoms" :D
So, yeah, I could hardly miss it.
I wish we had that show here!
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