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?

No worries steppemum I think I'm just sensitive about it because I got so much "oh it'll be fine, just like a period" when it really was awful.

Back to the topic though, my MIL always said the same thing that people just didn't really know or acknowledge pregnancy until 12 weeks.
Very interesting how things have changed.

I don't know... with ds1 and ds2 I would have been pretty sure by 7 weeks, test or no test, beause of the sickness. With ds3 I didn't know for longer than that as I was on the pill and didn't get any early symptoms.

I mentioned hysteria. Some women really get into a state.
For context, I have had a miscarriage. Women do have a right to be upset. Every right. Mine was ten weeks and not like a late period. Perhaps I’ve had more very early losses, but because I don’t know, then the loss of a chemical pregnancy or similar can’t upset me. But if id known, I could guarantee I would have been upset.

If such sensitive tests weren’t available, things like chemicals would not be picked up if you couldn’t test for a little bit longer.
I have had friends that have had a couple of chemicals/very early miscarriage and it has them in a real state, convinced there is something seriously wrong with them and their ability to conceive when there is not, and after months of worry they have gone on to have healthy children. If they’d never tested so early, in some cases it would be a period that was just a few days late.
So I can see the point that some of the older generation make, that some of them feel it was best not to know. It is a valid point. There is always more than one way to look at things. And it would spare some women working themselves up into a state. Like I say if ive has very early losses I’m quite glad not to know.

Of course there are advantages to early testing for people that maybe are conceiving repeatedly but the pregnancy isn’t sticking and they require further investigations. I can see the value in this also. There is more than one way of looking at things and it is perfectly valid to see the positives in both points of view.

I’m 63. With my first, you had to wait until your first period was two weeks late, then the doctor said my test was negative but it took a long time to take. He told me to wait a further two weeks and retake the test, so when I was due my 2nd period. He asked me was I sure about my dates , I was and in fact DS1 was born on his due date at exactly 40 weeks.
I knew I was pregnant though. I could pinpoint the time of conception. With DD1 I knew the morning after too.
I think I had a couple of early miscarriages. I had a rather cavalier attitude to contraception and a few late and heavy periods. At the time I greeted them with relief but only now on reflection consider that they were probably miscarriages.

I didn't tell work until I was 7 months pregnant in 1985 actually - was reading my diary frmo then recently and it didn't show . I just didn't want anyone to know or comment or treat me differently anf it worked. When i went in in a maternity dress (having already told HR a short while before) people had not even guessed in my department. One reason we didn't tell our parents until 12 weeks was in case of miscarriage as I would not have wanted anyone to know as I don't like fuss - other people are different; some want everyone to know right away.

My grandmother 60 odd years ago recons she knew straight away and that she was having twins. As she felt symptoms straight away that where stronger than previously. Then alot more movement. But they had no ultrasounds or anything really to confirm it was indeed twins. She was going off instinct.

Presumably if you suspected you might be pregnant (not taking precautions), then you would have eased up on the booze etc, my mum thought she might be pregnant with me so she stopped smoking, that was in the early 70s. Common sense I guess?

So I always feel a bit pissed off at the smug "you're hysterical/obsessed" crew. Easy for someone who hasn't had a big problem to say.

Me too - everyone who said this to me had got to have their own first pregnancy turn into a baby. It's easy to go on about how sanguine you'd have been about things that didn't actually happen to you. I do also think - controversially - that it's a bit different if you've already had successful pregnancies.

I have only had one mc and that was early. 6-8 weeks.
I took the test the day before I started to mc.
No WAY would I have mistaken that mc for a heavy period.
It was very painful (and I have suffered painful periods), very heavy and I had the diarrhoea with it.

I would have known. DH noticed at about 5-6 weeks both times.

Most women knew very little about their reproductive systems, they purely went on word of mouth. It’s very possible they could have assumed they were ‘under the weather’ rather than pregnant and also possible they didn’t link missed periods with being pregnant. Some women also don’t have symptoms, aside from a missed period I didn’t have any symptoms with my DD’s.

I think it's pretty horrible to say that some women "get in a state" and "get hysterical" over stuff OP. It's the type of phrasing we'd never say about men suffering pain so perhaps that's why it particularly winds me up.

I also see what you're trying to get at ("what you don't know can't hurt you") but that's just not always true.

Knowing or not knowing doesn't stop ectopic or molar pregnancies or disrupted miscarriages from happening, it just gives you more of a fighting chance of surviving them.

Arguably if we had better emotional social responses and understanding around grief and fertility we'd do better than now. It needs to be less of a taboo topic, not even more hidden away I think.

My first pregnancy was 1992 when tests were available and one confirmed I was pregnant. I was so used to my mum/aunties having to go to the doctors in the 60s/70s to have pregnancies confirmed that I went along to the GP myself. I was very surprised that he didn’t do any sort of test or examination, just said ‘ you are an intelligent, competent woman - if you tell me you are pregnant I am sure you are’ and booked me in for a scan.

It was actually a great start to having a first child and gave me a lot of confidence in my ability to know what was best for me and my DC.

I don’t think I’m horrible mogleflop to say that women do get into a state emotionally over the loss of an early pregnancy. I certainly was in a state and very upset about my loss at ten weeks. I think there can be a hysteria also, over is there a line,, isn’t there a line, the line has disappeared I’m having a chemical etc.
my colleague told me about her experiences In the context of my miscarriage. I’d told her the nurse had said to me I was ten weeks when I had miscarried. Her reply to me was that when she was having her babies you would have never knew because the gp wouldn’t confirm. She thinks it’s harder on women now. Although she was still very sympathetic to me. I do think she has a valid point. Although there’s no way I would have not known what was happening miscarrying at ten weeks. But something like 4 weeks 2 days? I doubt anyone would know for sure if they hadn’t tested, the baby isn’t visible on an ultrasound.

I’m not entirely convinced that like my colleague, most women really didn’t know back then. As this thread has evidenced it seems most women did, it was perhaps just the lucky few without symptoms. But perhaps because there was less of a tendency to announce things so early, because there were no reliable tests, people just didnt talk about loss of pregnancy and indeed early pregnancy at all.

I think it was a difference between knowing (gut feeling ) and KNOWING (confirmation by doctor). It was certainly very different to the way it is now.

I would have definitely known with my first pregnancy. Before I took the test I was convinced I was pregant because my breasts were rock hard and tingly and they’d never felt that way before. I didn’t have morning sickness but I was very tired and without testing it would have been obvious. Last month I had a late period and I knew I wasn’t pregnant as it just didn’t feel the same. That didn’t stop me from obsessively testing though but I just wanted to know for certain and I was right.

I think there can be a hysteria also, over is there a line,, isn’t there a line, the line has disappeared I’m having a chemical etc.

Which is where this always goes and I find it unpleasant. Having had a miscarriage doesn't give adequate context to describing some women's reactions as hysteria. Saying women have a right to get upset means little if you then describe some as hysterical.

My mum says the same. Two missed periods was the stabdard. Obviously, women would suspect they were pregnant but it wasn't confirmed until they were a couple of months along. As for drinking and smoking, I dont think the risks were as well known as they are now and so that was quite common. My mum thinks it's a shame a lot of women find our before they've missed a period because of the heartache that comes if the pregnancy doesn't work out, she's says ’in her day’ that unless if happened after the doctor not was often not considered a loss.

@BevBrook MASH - They didn't want to kill the rabbit, so they spayed it in order to use its removed ovaries to do the test. It was a win for the rabbit because it meant afterwards it could safely share its hutch with another rabbit.

Many people thought or suspected they were pregnant but you did not know for sure until the Dr tested you.

My girls are in their 30's and I seem to remember you could get a test done at a pharmacy beforehand but it was not accurate and most people did not say anything until the Dr confirmed it.

I know it sounds mad but I believe pregnancy tests used to involve rabbits. In some way.

Yes they would inject urine into a rabbit, if you are pregnant it causesthe rabbit's ovaries to swell.

I was born in 1966, my mother's GP didn't do an internal so she went to the Dr, said she had missed 2 periods and the Dr confirmed she was pregnant.

That always seemed like an easy job for me.

Some other things to horrify young women. My mum visited a relative and sat my younger cousin on her knee, my cousin came dawn with German measles the following day, my mum's only option was to wait and see if there was any damage.

There was some confusion as to whether I was twins (10 Lb at birth), the only way to confirm was an X-ray.
They didn't in the end, probably because my mum was quite well along.

Alcohol was used to stop premature labour and many woman drank Guinness 'for the baby.

I can remember in the early 1980's a friend at work not knowing whether or not she was pregnant; we were both fairly young, she was 16 and I was a couple of years older. Her "boyfriend", who was a few years older than her, and who was seeing her secretly because her dad didn't like him, had told her she wouldn't get pregnant the first time she had sex and later on that she wouldn't get pregnant if they had sex standing up. She'd missed a couple of periods, but she trusted that he knew what he was talking about. I can't remember now how I persuaded her to take a pregnancy test, but I did, even though she was sure she couldn't be pregnant.

We had a whip round between the girls at work to buy her a pregnancy test, and an older woman who I was friendly with (and whose teenage daughter had had an unwanted pregnancy) went to buy the test. I remember that it was expensive - like around £10, when my rent for the month was only about £50 - and was only available from certain pharmacies (I think that Boots didn't sell it, and this was a big city centre); I'm pretty sure that the older woman put a fair bit of money in to the pot to cover the cost. It was one of the ones with a test tube and a mirror, that had to be kept refrigerated and couldn't be moved whilst it was working, so there was no way she could have tested herself at home, so she did the test at work first thing in the morning, and by lunchtime she knew she was pregnant.

She was devastated; she'd honestly had no idea she could be pregnant. It really was a different world back then, and it's not so long ago. I can imagine back in the 1960's that even older women with children already might not realise.

On the topic of home pregnancy tests, the first account I remember of one using one was in about 1982/1983. It was an article by Paula Yates for Cosmopolitan and she talked about how she'd missed her periods, was putting on weight, hadn't put two and two together, but a friend persuaded her to buy a home pregnancy test. If I recall correctly, her description of it included having to pee in a jar and then insert a kind of dipstick which she had to go back and read half an hour later, which told her she was pregnant. (It turned out she was five months pregnant, in fact.)

I don't really know why this has stayed with me, but it must have been because pregnancy tests were so new. I'd love to be able to read the article again!

I had IVF so knew from very early that I was pregnant. Other than the lack of periods I really had no symptoms of pregnancy until my waistline started to expand at around 14 weeks. So I can definitely see how people may not have known back in the day.

Ministryofrevenge that is such a sad story. Poor girl. I wonder what happened to her it sounds like her boyfriend exploited how naive she was.
The test sounds like a nightmare also.
I’m shocked it was only 1985. It doesn’t seem that long ago. Not long before I was born.
It sounds like maybe it just depended on how worldly wise you were or who your influences were as to the level of knowledge and awareness you had back then.