so women can think they are still menstruating. Mearns said that missed pregnancies happen most often with "busy women, and particularly as they approach the menopause," when they wouldn't be expecting it and are more likely to pass off symptoms as something else: Medically, speaking, bleeding during pregnancy is quite common, especially during the first few months. And while most pregnant women would have felt their babies kick, West's tilted uterus meant that, to her, it likely felt like back pain - and although she did gain a fair bit of weight, she assumed she was "just getting fat."Īlthough these situations aren't something she sees often, British midwife Jen Mearns told The Daily Mail that she does see them, and that the explanations behind them are often the same. She thought she'd been getting her periods, but they were irregular, and looking back, it was likely that she wasn't actually having periods at all, but spotting, or another kind of light bleeding. In West's case, her gynecological history also allowed her to misread the symptoms of her pregnancy. It was only after her husband insisted they head to the emergency room that the couple learned West was actually in labor, and was about to give birth to their son. According to Parents, West was on vacation when she began feeling unwell, and started experiencing intense cramping, but she'd suffered from fibroid tumors and ovarian cysts, and assumed that was what was behind the increasing pain. ![]() Illinois mom Jennifer West has a similar story. And to top it all off, she was carrying her baby at the back of her uterus, which meant she didn't have a big pregnancy bump despite her small size. ![]() She also lost weight as her pregnancy progressed, and was only 112 pounds the day she gave birth. In an interview with Cosmopolitan, an anonymous Australian woman who didn't learn she was pregnant until she was already seven months along said that the fact that she'd suffered from stage-five endometriosis for four years meant that pregnancy symptoms like bloating, nausea, and weight fluctuations had become pretty common for her, and that she also wasn't having periods, so the tell-tale missed period that tips off most women also wasn't there to tip her off. In most cases where a pregnancy is detected late or missed entirely, it seems like women fall into one of two groups: either they had basically no symptoms of pregnancy at all, or they did and dismissed them as symptoms of a pre-existing medical condition, like endometriosis or fibroids. But the fact that it happens (and to more women than most people might realize) means that perhaps it's something that should be discussed a little more - especially because women who have experienced it have had to deal with a lot of judgment over why they didn't know. The notion that you can go from thinking your aren't pregnant to literally giving birth and suddenly becoming somebody's mother is pretty terrifying. But that's not all: it's thought that as many as 1 in 2,500 women can be totally unaware of their pregnancies until they go into labor. That is pretty far along - the halfway point for a full-term pregnancy - and only a few weeks before viability, the point at which a baby has a reasonable shot at surviving outside of the womb. ![]() And yes, it really could happen to you.Īccording to The Huffington Post, an estimated 1 in 450 pregnant women doesn’t actually find out they are pregnant until at least their 20th week of pregnancy. But it obviously does happen - there is a whole reality show dedicated to it - so how common is it for women to not know they are pregnant? It's definitely rare, but not impossible. At the same time, it's pretty hard to actually imagine that it's possible to be pregnant without knowing it (especially if you've been pregnant and have felt very, very aware of it). Before I got pregnant, stories about women who went through their entire pregnancies without even realizing they were pregnant made me irrationally afraid that I, too, might one day give birth suddenly after thinking I just had back pain or food poisoning.
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