2nd unexpected baby - BBC news web item

[mummytosteven]

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/humber/3851327.stm

Blimey!

gawd is she on another planet???

I could understand the period confusion - but surely she would have felt the baby moving, even if no m/s, sore boobs etc???

Wow, nine months of booze and soft cheese and NO WORRIES...

Extraordinary! It's a bit like the couple in Germany who had been brought up very strictly and went to the doctors to find out why they hadn't conceived after 3 yrs of marriage. Turns out they had no idea about reproduction and had never done it. They had quite a surprise, I imagine.

I just don't get how women don't know they're pregnant until they are in labour. HOw can a woman not know?

This happened to a woman who started working where I work.
She was with us for a fortnight, then didn't come in, we were told she had gone to hospital with bad pains, and that it was personal. About a week later, her family told us that she had actually given birth, unaware of her pregnancy, baby was a few wks early and fine....we were all dubious, but I guess she had no reason to lie.

You might be one of those people who sail through feeling fine, I suppose.

But quite frankly I'd suspect, when I spotted a huge pregnant belly bulging out of my trousers, wouldn't you?

I've heard a 'friend of a friend' story on very similar lines, Wilbur. Do you think they enjoyed it once they'd worked it out?

i could understand the first time round - you get funny symptoms that all fade off around 12 weeks -but the second time round???

I just don't get it! How can you not know? Speaking from personal experience:
(1) I was the size of a house and
(2) I could see limbs poking out of my stomach

You would be surprised how it can happen. My sister in law 1) had bleeding throughout, she had always been irregular anyway 2) didn't have any nausea 3) is big and carried baby very much in her hips (her mum thought she had lost weight!) 4) would occasionally have pains, this was the baby kicking her, but then of course they would stop!
Anyway when she complained of "cramps" during an evening shift at work (in a shop) her older women coworkers joked, "well, if we didn't know better we'd say you were in labour, ha ha..." She DROVE HERSELF to hospital at 3 am; when they examined her she had FULLY DILATED, my nephew was born shortly afterwards, 7 lb. 15 oz. My brother was in the main waiting area (he didn't know where in the hospital she had been taken) and when the doctor found him and asked, "is your girlfriend in the delivery room?" he looked around to see who they were talking to, and he was the only one in the room ! She couldn't breastfeed, (actually they've just had their second baby and she couldn't feed him either.) Anyway she is a strong lady, two weeks after the birth she was back at college! And everything worked out great, they got married a couple years later...

If you met her you'd see what I mean about hips, she has a strange build. Also when my mother was skeptical the hospital staff said they had seven or so similar cases a year (and my hometown has only about 50,000 people...)

She was on the pill the whole time too. But no damage to baby, he was normal. OK I'll stop now!

Depends how big you are to start with I suppose. I work with someone who has been pregnant twice and you really couldn't tell from her shape at all.

This happened to my friend and his partner. She thought she had a dicky tummy from a chinese and went to the toilet only to see the baby's head poking out!! Delivered him herself on the bathroom floor. He was nearly 8lb but she was still a size 12. She'd also been abseiling, and drinking a few weeks before and there was NO WAY she knew she was pg. They've had another baby this year which was a normal pg and she was enormous at 9 months! Weird!

Well I was 18 weeks pregnant and had bleeding which I assumued to be normal periods. Didn't do pregnancy test until I felt fat one day and suddenly the peeny dropped that I could be pregnant Was taking the pill and just never really considered it. But to go to term...............I agree with Soupy re the limbs poking about and everything

Penny, obviously

I sqw a documentary on this about 5 years ago which I've dined out on many times since. One woman, who had had a child before, started to give birth on the toilet and delivered herself on the bathroom floor. Her dh came to see if she was OK. Answer: 'I've just had a baby.' One disturbing incident was a girl of about 18 who had been unwell all day (labour) and went for a bath in the evening which she thought would help, gave birth in the bathroom, went outside and put the baby in the garden shed and went to bed without her parents being any the wiser. Her dad found the baby next morning when he heard crying, the police came and it was them that suggested it might be their daughters. She was clearly really traumatised by the birth and at some level thought she could put the baby away and deal with it in the morning when she felt better. What was really weird was that the girl was a dancer and they showed a photo of her when she must have been about 34 weeks pg: she was sitting cross-legged wearing a leotard and she was just skin and bone, you couldn't see the tiniest bump. The doctor said the baby must have been just tucked into her pelvis and under her ribs. Very strange - none of my three ever managed that!

Just got an email from my best friend today. Her little sister found out this week she's pg at 24 weeks!

My grandmother didn't know she was pregnant until the neighbour asked when the midwife was coming - and this was in the 20s when they wore baggy unfitted dresses which showed nothing of the figure, so she must have been very far on for the neigbhour to think that the midwife would be coming any day now! Even when she went into labour she didn't know that she was in labour, jsut though that she had an upset tummy.

Apparently she had a very bad labour indeed, and with such ignorance it's no wonder my father was an only child!

9lb 2oz! HOW on EARTH could you not know? I'm

I didn't know until I was 4 months. It was my first and I wasn't having periods anyway so..... it was great though, i'd got through that worrying bit and all that goes with it without knowing!!! However as soon as I did know I KNEW iykwim!

An old boyfriend's dad was a GP and he would tell the story of delivering a bay to a 14 year old who hadn't even realised she was pregnant. He said he wouldn't have minded so much, if the previous year he hadn't had to do exactly the same thing for her sister!

It can be horribly distressing. I knew some parents whose student daughter got pregnant by her steady boyfriend and turned out to have been in denial about it to the extent that going into labour was a profound psychological shock for her - she had tuned out all the signs, seemingly. Baby was small (but healthy) and she was fairly tall and broad-hipped. Neither her parents nor the b/f suspected a thing.
Happy ending for them all - she got treatment, finished her degree and is still happily with the child and the dad.
And look at all the people on Mumsnet who spotted at roughly monthly intervals well into their pregnancies (me included) - one person's spotting is another's light period, I guess. But yes, the elbows and heels are hard to ignore

I've got several friends who didn't realise till well into a pregnancy while breastfeeding. One was six months and only discovered on a scan. Two others only realised when they felt the baby move...

I suppose if you were on the pill you'd still get 'periods' as they aren't real ones in the first place.