Before home pregnancy testing was available you still must have known you were pregnant?

[Skydiving]

I have a colleague, almost 60, who claims that when she had her dc, 30-40 years ago, pregnancy tests for home use weren’t really available, and no one knew they were pregnant until about 12 weeks.
Supposedly, the gp wouldn’t see you to ‘confirm it’ until you had missed two periods. So according to her, you just continued as normal (drinking, smoking etc etc) until you had missed at least two periods, and could get a gp appointment, making you about 10-12 weeks.

Now I know times were different, but, I think even if this business about the gp not seeing you was true, you would still know that you were pregnant. You would have to have a serious lack of awareness of your own body not to notice the tiredness, sickness and every other bloody symptom. And even if you are the one in a million that gets no symptoms, the missed period would give it away surely?

I don’t know if it’s just a different time now, and people get over excited about very early pregnancy, and very upset when they miscarry (I’ve had one myself), whereas in the past they didn’t take things as a given so much.
Or is it because if you don’t know you are pregnant by test confirmation, maybe the symptoms seem less because you aren’t fixating on them.
Or is my colleague just talking bollocks?

Nearly 30 years ago the only option was to take a sample to the chemist for testing - I think you had to be 7 days late for it to be accurate

I'm 31 and my mum definitely took a home test with me. A quick Google says the first home tests were available in the mid-70s.

I had to wait for 2 weeks with dc1 & the Test came up as negative. I didn’t get a positive until I’d missed 2 periods. I only drank while I had my period when I was TTC.

I’m 13 weeks with my third and have spent the past 8 weeks exhausted and vomiting multiple times a day. If I didn’t think I was pregnant I’d have thought i was seriously ill.

I didn’t have a single symptom until 19w and I still wore size 8 jeans!

My DM is 82 & says she knew very quickly she was pregnant both times, with no need for a test. And the GP did expect you to have missed two periods before confirming it. She had very regular cycles, as did I, so found it easy to tell.

I'm 54 & my eldest DC is 25. Like my DM I knew within a few days of missing a period, and the same with my second & third pregnancies. I have literally done three pregnancy tests in my life, one for each DC. You'd have to wait until a few days after you were due to test, and tests were expensive so you wouldn't do one unless you were reasonably sure. We certainly weren't as aware of early losses.

A colleague of mine just found out she's 16 weeks pregnant. Had no idea. Thought she was a bit rundown.

Oh my goodness they did an internal exam?
For what purpose I can’t imagine.
So I’m guessing the majority did know, maybe my colleague was one of the lucky ones with few symptoms.
In some ways it was probably better that people didn’t know for sure. I do think the symptoms, although Definitely real (I’m suffering right now), probably weren’t quite as bad if you didn’t know for certain you were pregnant.
Without sounding callous, I think there would be less hysteria over miscarriages also, you can’t grieve something you never knew for certain you had. A ‘chemical pregnancy’ just wouldn’t have existed. It’s not that these women don’t have a right to be upset, they do. But sometimes I wonder if it would be kinder for them never to have known.
Of course the advantage is now you can cut out alcohol etc once you test positive, so from that perspective the earlier the better.

I took my first home test in 1985 so they were fairly widely available then, but you didn't use them until a week after your period was due. Same in 1995.

While for some women it was indeed probably kinder not to know about early losses, I do suspect that a lot of women who 'couldn't get pregnant' in the past actually couldn't stay pregnant. If pregnancy couldn't be confirmed before eight weeks I'd have been sent for infertility rather than recurrent miscarriage treatment and, while I can't know for sure whether it was the treatment or just coincidence that my fourth pregnancy stuck, I suspect I wouldn't now be 36 weeks pregnant. So that's a potential upside to knowing.

My Mum is in her seventies. She certainly didn’t just “keep drinking”.

She planned her pregnancies and acted accordingly.

Confirmation from the doctor isn’t the same thing as knowing you’re pregnant or not.

I knew before I took a test.

Yes Lisa I agree with you in your circumstances it would be better to know.

Home testing was readily available in the 1980s - you had to wait for a few days after your period was due.

My GP said that in his opinion, early testing led to additional stress, because people started to talk about having miscarriages and losing babies when actually their period was only a week or so late. My mum has said the same, that people would often have late periods and would be disappointed, but wouldn't see it as having a miscarriage.

In 1991, I went to the doctors as my period was 2 weeks late and I felt nauseous. Home pregnancy tests were available but it was still the norm to go to the gp for confirmation. She thought I was but sent away the test for confirmation - I can't remember what was tested, I assume blood or urine , but I do remeber that I had to wait a few days for the result and I went to a music festival that weekend and told my friends that I couldn't drink because I had taken my hayfever tablets and it would make me ill if I mixed them with alcohol.

And my Grandmother (who would be well over one hundred if she was still alive) lost babies and was devastated.

There was a lot of ignorance. My Dad never discovered until after his parents died that he was born about 2 months after their wedding. My Nan was a well built girl, knew nothing, and just didn't realise (or was in denial) for months (early 1940's).

I'm in my 50's and you were supposed to be at least a week late before testing. My periods were always all over the place and as it turned out my early known pregnancy symptoms were feeling as if my period was about to begin any moment. I'm fairly sure I had an 8 week miscarriage when I was about 20 but didn't want to be pregnant so just kept holding on for a really late period which finally arrived and was ..... unpleasant.

Wasn’t there an episode of MASH where they had to sacrifice a rabbit to find out whether someone was pregnant? I know it sounds mad but I believe pregnancy tests used to involve rabbits. In some way.

Oh my goodness they did an internal exam?

Yep, can you imagine not having any idea that was going to happen - that was me. I was so shocked and embarrassed I didn't go to the
GP till I was 5 months pregnant with the second one.

DS1 I only knew because I was obsessively testing from the week before my period was due, DS2 I knew practically from the day he was conceived- I felt AWFUL for the majority of my pregnancy, DS3 I didn't find out until 10 weeks and thought I just it was January blues that was making me so flat and tired! So I can easily see how you wouldn't know till later, especially if you weren't trying for a baby.

I’ve had one miscarriage at c 11 weeks and one full term pregnancy. My symptoms were so minor - like the only thing I could really point out for sure was bleeding gums - and that’s with knowing and searching for symptoms. So I find it believable.
Second pregnancy (MC) came coming up for two years post partum when I wasn’t having regular periods and was it not for the fact that I was basically testing every few days for ages because I was/am trying, I wouldn’t have had any reason to suspect.

It's true. I had to wait until I had missed two periods to see a doctor to get my pregnancy confirmed in 1980 but I strongly suspected I was pregnant (I wouldn't have gone to the doctor otherwise). I was getting morning sickness before I got the confirmation two weeks later. You didn't get an ante-natal appointment until 12 weeks, nobody wanted to know until then.

I didn't smoke but no-one was concerned about drinking then anyway, in fact I was advised by friends to drink a can of Mackeson every day 'for the baby'.

My aunt had to have an X-ray to confirm twins!

The first time I ever did a pregnancy test 30 years ago it was like a weird little chemistry set! Very complicated compared with now

My mother says pregnancy tests were around in 1973 when she was first time pregnant.

Bev the rabbit lived, but yes, they injected the rabbit with (I think) Margeret's blood then looked for changes in its ovaries as a sign of pregnancy hormones.

Very early pregnancy testing involved rabbits. They were injected with the urine then examined for changes in their ovaries several days later (after slaughter). Awful: