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?

I had 3 children in the 70s and no home tests. Only confirmed by GP. I also didn’t have any scans or anything. We didn’t used to know the sex of the baby and no early scans like you get these days. I sometimes think all the scans cause more problems. Reading on here about people having scans at 5-6 weeks and worrying because there was an empty sac then other people saying that was normal that is all extra worry. Sometimes all the technology can be a good thing but other times it causes extra stress

Does anyone over 40 remember home pregnancy tests in the 80s? We had actual test tubes and little bags of powder...you had to put your pee on the powder in the tube and mix it with the stuff....then wait for about an hour or something!

In the US, pre natal care is much more doctor led than midwife led,mperhaps partly due to the health insurance approach they have there. So Appointments are with doctors or gynaecologists not widwifes and there is generally more intervention.

Going back to lifestyle changes when trying to become pregnant or during, I think the late 60s is the turning point, but widespread changes came when women started to be older having their first child. This is also from 70s and 80s. Of course today, the groups clinics try to target about not smoking and drinking etc are younger pregnant women - they are more likely to need more help and advice. It is a sweepin generalisation of course, but as first time mothers get older, having a baby is less definite, perhaps more thought about in advance and the women are simply more mature. I'd suspect that the first mothers in the 60s and 70s and 80s to stop drinking or smoking, or to take folic acid regularly or whatever, were the older and/or more educated ones.

My mum is 81. When she was expecting me she had to miss two periods before taking a sample to the doctor for testing and the test involved a frog.

The first pregnancy test kits were not invented until 1968.

My oldest is 30. I was 6 weeks pregnant and totally unaware of the fact. I went into hospital for an op, they asked when my last period was and when I realised I was late they did the test.

Four years later you had to be two weeks past the date of your last period for the doc to do a test.

With my middle daughter I had a pregnancy test at the Family Planning clinic (do they still exist now?). If you could buy a test it was expensive.

By the time the last two came along (aged 19 and 16) tests were easily available at the chemist.

ha! My aunt birthed an 8lb baby "2 months early". Apparently my uncle went around bragging about it until my mother couldn't stand the boast any more and told him to shut it; he was fooling nobody (did not make her popular with him). Naturally my mom trotted this story out whenever she was feeling fractious with these inlaws.

Even the "baby" (at 46yo) twigged that his mum was up the duff when his parents married, and babbled about it at wedding last year (not sure why, guess he needed to...). I like to think his parents are laid back enough now to laugh.

@AjasLipstick Do you mean like the old fashioned test I linked to at 21.22 ?

They were a right faff and I have to smile at the "POAS" which everyone says now ... when it seems a bit stressful, spare a thought for those of us who must have looked like mad scientists

My mum’s 65 and has eight kids and has never taken a pregnancy test. She charted before it was fashionable to do so and always knew within a couple of weeks after conception if she was pregnant. The only one that took her by surprise was number eight as she was 45 and thought it was the menopause. She only realised when the sickness started.

I was first pregnant in 1996 and did a home test but it still required a GP appointment to have it confirmed.

Well, I think a lot of it depends on whether you're trying to get pregnant or not. I have very specific pregnancy symptoms, and didn't even take a test with dc2 because I was 100% sure from about 3 days before my period was due. With dc3, I had the same symptoms but because I wasn't trying to get pregnant or even considering another baby, I ignored them or wrote them off to another cause. Then one day, it just clicked that I hadn't had a period in a while and that all these things were pregnancy symptoms before. I was about 8 weeks and felt very stupid!

And I suspect there are still quite a lot of unplanned pregnancies today which get a fair way before the pregnant person realises. For some people the early symptoms and very striking, but for many they are noticeable when you're looking out for them and especially if you're trying to become pregnant. In the past, although some people had to work really hard to become pregnant and so would have been recording everything, most people would have been a bit more laid back be jabs they wouldn't it have known exactly when they were ovulating, or to be Loki g for symptoms on a specific day....certainly not as early as we do today.....the science of the ovulation stick and the pee pregnancy stick allows us to look for and match and interpret symptoms Or a lack of them in a way which just wasn't possible before, and going back further before the pill and birth control women were in control of, most women were hoping for fewer children and not desperately looking for symptoms to confirm but hoping they weren't pregnant. Of course throughout time there have been women with fertility problems who chart their cycles and periods in hope.

There was no information about pregnancy and childbirth 50 or more years ago and women would have to wait three months for the internal examination. My mother was amazed when I told her that a pregnancy lasted 40 weeks as opposed to 9 months. There was no sex education in school and illigitimate bith, although not uncommon, was hugely stigmatising. It really was a different world.

I'd have been pretty certain even without a test and with the fairly minimal symptoms I had, as I have never missed a period for reasons other than pregnancy and always had something pretty close to the textbook 28-day cycle.

I guess this is part of the meaning behind the old-fashioned expression of being 'in hope' - at the beginning it meant you weren't sure (but hoping you were, at least that was what you expressed as socially desirable), later on it meant you were hoping that you and the baby would come through pregnancy and childbirth safety

And yes, lots of people have irregular periods and even those with regular ones don't always track them or remember when their last was....so unless you're watching and waiting, many people could easily get to 7 or 8 weeks before they really think 'hold on, when was my last period'. There are still lots and lots of little surprises out there. I've known friends who had a little surprise after they thought they were done with their 2 or 3. They weren't looking out for symptoms becias they thought their birth control was ...in control, and one only realised at 18 weeks....didn't even know it was 18 weeks then, and thought perhaps about 9, but a GP thought further,,mperhaps 13 weeks and sent her for a quick scan and it was 18 weeks - and that was someone who had been very aware with her first 2 of symptoms becias she was on the look out. She couldn't believe she hadn't known....the pill and distorted periods or even no periods hides all kinds of 'secrets"

(Oh, have obviously 'missed' periods because of bf, but that's different)

Yes, it was totLly normal to keep smoking until perhaps the 1970s and even then when it was discouraged, it wasn't seen as a shocking harmful thing to do to your baby. When I was in hospital with my baby in mid 80s, I bumped into 3 other mums in the kitchen - all 3 were smokers, and all three with low birth weight babies, which I don't think they connected with the smoking.

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.

Having talked to some of my elderly relatives they did know they were pregnant and miscarrying. They did feel emotional but rarely acknowledged it because they weren't "officially" pregnant. Women of their generation, at least in my family, were very outwardly stoical - about the loss of children in infancy too - but they carried unacknowledged pain.

My mum was a 34 weeker weighing 8lb apparently, that was in 1944!

My Mum had an awful stomach flu thing when she must have been really early days with me. Was still feeling rotten 2 weeks later, so saw the GP, who ran some tests. Dr told my Dad she was pregnant later that day when he went in for something else! This was a small market town in the ‘80s.

I've always wondered at what point do you decide you have missed a period rather than it being very late? Perhaps when the next one would have been due so eight weeks after your last one? Just something I ponder on occasionally!

But, yes, my mum expressed that she found it strange that I found out so early and some older women at work said things like "Oh, pregnancies must seem so long these days" but I was always pretty sure from very early on so I don't know how it would have felt any different.

And loving the stories of the 2 month early babies who had all reached a good 8 lbs! Haha! I guess the women all just rolled their eyes and it was an unspoken (or only quietly gossiped) thing, but the community playing along with it allowed the children a chance to grow up without stigma or with less of it. Of course, that all worked okay if the bloke who'd got you pregnant was willing to marry you and you were 'respectable' by the time of birth. People were willing to smile about the 'early' baby then, but not so much when the woman was still unmarried at the point of birth - no smiling indulgently about early babies then.

I’m surprised at the suggestion of no 12 weeks scan 15 years ago - I my first in 2003 and 13 week scams were definitely the norm then!

13 week scams = 12 week scans...

My DM didn’t know she was pregnant until the 3rd trimester.

She smoked and drank the whole way through.

I have a great gran who got married as a pregnant 16 year old.

I think I’ve probably had miscarriages I’m unaware of- irregular periods, sometimes very heavy, symptomless pregnancies.

But when tests were a tenner and I was broke it seemed like a waste of money!

I did have one confirmed miscarriage but I didn’t find it at all traumatic. I have to think hard to even remember what year it was.

I’m 60 and your colleague’s account sounds about right. I had awful morning sickness (as it was called then) so I was pretty sure I was pregnant but It wouldn’t have occurred to me to take a home test. I just waited till I missed the requisite number of periods then went to the GP for confirmation.

Scans were not routinely offered either. And most hospitals would not tell you the sex of your child even if they could see what it was.

Unbelievable really, how little we were allowed to know about our own pregnancies.

Well we're assuming ambivilance but obviously lots of women would be trying for babies, so to be trying then miss a period... then another... yeah you’d be quite dumb not to realise

I knew before I’d missed my period with both of mine but they were planned