think how could a women know she wasn't pregnant

[AuntiePickleBottom]

i have been watching, i didn't know i was pregnant, and think how did they not know

No - of course not every woman gets all the pregnancy signs. That's common knowledge.

To not get ANY of them, and to go well into the 3rd tri, or even into labour before realising - that I find hard to get my head around, even though I know it happens.

I know it happens, but am also baffled. I knew I was pregnant before my period was late, due to an implantation bleed but I was trying to conceive. Then I was sick on and off for 16 weeks. I know that not everyone goes through that. I also didnt get a proper bump for ages.

BUT in spite of my DD being back to back for most of my pregnancy,I unmistakeably felt her move. I would lie on my back some nights and it was quite clear that she was pushing my tummy out and moving under the skin. Beautiful to watch, but would have been terrifying (something out of Alien) had I not known. I know some women carry their LOs very far back and so dont see the movement and feel less, but that 'pregnancy symptom' I find very hard to believe these women didnt experience, even if its to a much lesser extent than I felt. I'm a size 12 btw and have never had a flat stomach.

Obviously I'm just guessing as I've never had this shock, but I do believe there must be a level of denial involved, like I think one PP suggested. Thats not me being judgemental I hasten to add, it just makes it easier for me to wrap my head around it like that.

I started a thread on a similar subject here where I was hoping to hear stories from women who had gone full term without realizing. It was interesting, and the most common occurrences seemed to be with irregular periods and first pregnancies, so the symptoms wouldn't be familiar.

I hear lots of stories about women who go into labour without having realized they are pregnant, but never firsthand accounts. It's always a friend or a flatmate or a co-worker, so I've never had the opportunity to ask how it all happened or what they were thinking.

I was 6 months gone when i found out I was pregnant. I was 17, stupid and very much in denial. To put it simply I didn't know the signs of pregnancy except the obvious but was never sick and had a flat belly ..the funny taste in my mouth, sore boobs, the feelings in my belly never gave it away.

I think its really interesting. My mum didn't know she was pregnant with my older brother. Then he was born premature so she really didn't have time to get used to things.

I also find it just as interesting when some women can tell very early too. Or in my case it was my dp that knew before me and told me to get a test before I'd had chance to even miss my period lol.

you can have regular bleeds/periods when pregnant, at exactly the times you would have your periods

if you have irregular periods etc or a coil so you don't ahve periods, you can easily not realise for months.

not all women are sick etc.

i know a few 40+ women who thoguth they were menopausal/perimenopausal but were actually pregnant

if you're not sick, not tired, don't have sore breasts , keep having periods etc.. it would be quite possible to get quite far along without realising and put movements down to wind and any weight gain to eating too mcuh/hormones etc

I thought a lot happened near the menopause, and symptoms are put down to that (no periods, emotions, etc.). And if they have had kids and are a bit overweight....

I don't believe it either - I think anyone who doesn't "know" has built up a massive psychological barrier.

Bump/periods aside - um... I had an alien in my abdomen whom I could see moving. If I'd not known I was pregnant I'd have gone to the doctor to tell him my liver was moving around independetly!

That's a lot of 'ifs' though, Lulumaam.

I really do think that you'd need to be in the very unusual position of not having any symptoms, and/or also being very unaware if your own body, and/or in a fairly reasonable amount of denial about it.

To meet all of these criteria is pretty unusual.

Friend didn't know for a good 3 months or so. She had an implantation bleed she mistook for her period, didn't have any symptoms and was rather tubby around the middle anyway. If your periods are all over the place then I can understand you could miss it if you're not watching out for symptoms like crazy - heck the only significant symptom I get when pregnant early on (before I invariably miscarry) is not fancying chocolate.

Apart from all the sickness I was just so uncomfortable from around 28 weeks.

Well, like I said, I got to 11 weeks and never had an idea I was pregnant before I miscarried.

No psychological denial as I wanted a baby (sadly had to wait as the D&C for this miscarriage gave me Asherman's) - just the mix of symptoms wasn't what I expected and I had a period that lasted a day and was extremely light. So I never missed them.

But getting to the third trimester or into labour....?

Loads of people don't discover it in the first tri.

My DH's mum thought he was the menopause. Went to the Dr and found out she was 6 weeks away from having a baby! His brothers are 20 years older than him - he was a shock to say the least!

Someone at a toddler group I go to had her second baby at 28 weeks during half term. Had no idea she was pregnant as she'd only put on 2 lb, was having regular periods, etc. She went to the Dr cos she was having a discharge, he diagnosed a water infection and gave antibiotics. She took the antibiotics and got stomach cramps, assumed they were a side-effect of the ABs, until she went to the loo and her DS was born. It was her second chlid but she had no idea she was pregnant again.

You keep saying 'that must be very unusual' or 'that's a lot of things to all happen at once'.

Yes. Yes it is. That's why most people do realise they are pregnant.

But how many babies were born last year? Even something "very very unusual" will happen a few times a year when there are so many opportunities for it to happen.

I didnt know i was prenant with ds till i was 13 weeks. I have endo metriosis and the medication i was on stopped my periods and could take a while for them to restart. I went on the pill had a negative before i did then thought it was odd i hadn't had a period between packets noticed i had sore boobs so took a test. Ds is 4

This apparently happened to my 'mother'. She didn't know she was pregnant until she was in labour. She was still in size 10 jeans. When the docs realised she was pregnant they thought she was having a miscarrage until a baby over 7lbs came out.

Nobody else knew but I have my suspicions that she actually did but hid it.

I have heard that if you are in denial enough, then you don't get the normal pregnancy symptoms.

I didn't know I was pregnant with DS1 until I was 6 months. I felt horrendous throughout the pregnancy: exhausted, sick, the usual. I still got regular 'periods' as normal and didn't put on any weight until after I found out.

I'd been going to the doctors because being exhausted and unable to eat is not good. They'd asked me if I could be pregnant and I'd replied that I was having regular periods so they didn't bother testing. Instead they tested me for leukaemia, diabetes, etc, before deciding that I must be depressed and trying to prescribe antidepressants (a prescription I never too to the chemist).

At 6 months, I started to feel and see DS1 moving so I went and they confirmed the pregnancy by letting me listen to the heart beat. I did ask why they hadn't bothered testing as surely doctors know that having your period is not always a guarantee that you aren't pregnant. I never got a sensible answer to that question.

I had an anterior placenta when pg and you couldn't see dd moving round from the outside until the very, very end, and then only if you knew what you were looking for. My friend who had an anterior placenta and an op baby felt no movement at all and had to have regular checks on the baby.

Just because something is rare and outside of your own experience, doesn't make it incomprehensible.

I had a friend it happened to. Slim, sporty, normal periods, no signs at all. Went home from uni for easter break and gave birth. She was in a stable longterm relationship, happy, broody even and had no clue. She looked normal, felt normal, had normal periods and no movements. She was in very severe shock for a long time.

I didn't know I was pregnant with ds1 until I was 21 weeks.

I was 20yo, and just simply didn't recognise the very mild symptoms. My periods had always been irregular. I did get a little belly and bigger boobs, but it was over Christmas and I just thought I'd put on a bit of weight. I was getting ridiculously tired, but I'd finished college and started FT work in a very manual job, and just assumed that was what was making ne tired.

When I finally did a test just on the off chance, I was stunned!

With ds2, I recognised the symptoms and was 100% sure I was pregnant after 2 weeks, even when a test came up negative.

A mother of a boy I used to teach gave birth and brought her baby in to show everyone. She knew she was pregnant, but no-one else did. She must have been a size 8-10 throughout the entire pregnancy and didn't wear baggy tops or anything. I thought she was playing a practical joke when she turned up with the baby and that it was her neice or something, but no. She just had no bump at all. God only knows how the baby fitted in! Must have been wrapped around her liver and lungs or something!!

I find it baffling, but not in a judgemental way - just in a fascinated, open minded way.

My pregnancies were such an ordeal and I was so enormous that I'm just envious if nothing else that someone could get through it so "easily" to the extent they didn't even know!

I do believe it happens though.

Pregnancy and fertility and giving birth and all those kinds of things are such extrodinary miracle type things (for want of a better way of describing it!) that there should be these weird anomolies.

It happened to my sister.
She had DC1 and her periods never came back for a few months afterwards.
I had a day out with her when I was 6 mo pregnant and loads of people were asking me about it 'when is the baby due?' etc as I was massive. She had a flat tummy, was even talking to her about how she'd lost her baby weight etc.
The next day she had a baby. 8lb and overdue they reckoned. It was 10 months after DC1 had been born and she just thought her periods hadnt returned yet. No other signs at all.

When I was pregnant with DD1 my periods did not stop but I still knew I was pregnant. First sign tingling breasts then nausea and dizziness, tiredness and vomiting. Could not do jeans up by 6 weeks.

My friend was also pregnant but had no symptoms, no bump, as my body changed hers stayed the same.

She kept saying that they had made a mistake and she wasn't really pregnant.

I can't imagine not knowing I was pregnant until the baby was born but I am sure it happens.

I guess depending on how you're built there's a lot of room in there for something to grow anyway - I'm thinking of my Gran, who died from ovarian cancer where the surgeons removed a tumour the size of a watermelon from inside her which had just grown away unnoticed because there's so much free space in your abdomen for expansion. If that can go unnoticed, I could see how a pregnancy could possibly be unnoticed - especially if you're expanding in a period like over Christmas when you expect to gain a few pounds anyway. Add in some people not having morning sickness as such, but just not fancying food much and they'd probably lose weight to hide the weight gain.

My friend (I think it might have been later than 3 months for her - I've got 4/5 in my head from somewhere but wasn't sure so understated rather than overstated) tended to live in trackies and hooded tops anyway - so didn't even have the jeans getting tight thing as an indicator.