“I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant”
By Glinda
Yeah, right.
Because I was tired and bored last night, I somehow found myself watching “Cake Boss” on TLC, which is a misnomer, because I certainly don’t view it as a channel from which you learn anything, unless you have a burning desire to learn about large families, subsequent divorces, and the lives people who work on motorcycles. Interesting as those may indeed be, I’m not sure anyone truly learns anything from them.
Anyhoo, whilst watching said show about a Hoboken, NJ (a world I am tantalizingly unfamiliar with, and which I view as a place as strange and interesting as India) cake baker and his staff, I saw an advertisement for this show, called, rather uninspiringly, “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant.” To which I say, “Excrement from a male cow!”
Having now been pregnant twice, I don’t see how this is possible. There is no way your periods are as heavy as normal, if even you do experience bleeding. Bleeding during pregnancy can happen, but it is not the norm. And what about the kicking? Could anyone possibly delude themselves that a hard kick to the ribs is simply the result of exuberant intestinal activity from the burrito one ingested at dinnertime? What about when the baby “drops?” As my best friend who is also currently pregnant stated, “I feel like my vagina is going to fall out every time I stand up.” How could that ever be considered normal?
Which leads me to the crux of the matter. I think the vast majority of women who “don’t know” they are pregnant are indeed deluding themselves. They are having a serious disconnect with their bodies, and for whatever reason, are covincing themselves that all the very obvious signs are something else entirely. The mind is a powerful thing, and if the brain can have the ability to induce illnesses, then it’s nothing to pretend that isn’t a 5 pound baby inside you.
Because seriously, having a baby is scary. Oh yes, it’s wonderful and miraculous, but for many first time moms, it is as scary as hell. Myself included. Having to contemplate an unexpected pregnancy and the subsequent effect on the rest of your entire life is scary. And it’s much easier to hide your head in the sand than to deal with it. There may be a few legitimate exceptions to this, but there certainly aren’t as many as portrayed on this show. Well, I’m still skeptical about the legitmate exceptions, actually.
So, I won’t watch the show, because the mixture of disbelief mixed in with a small amount of sympathy will be too much for me to bear.
July 7th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
I feel the exact same way as you. When I can SEE my abdomen doing a fine imitation of a Mexican jumping bean, and when the little moppet gives me a good hard punch to the cervix, I really fail to see how it can be interpreted as anything other than pregnancy. If nothing else, wouldn’t those symptoms at the very least be unusual enough to cause a woman to go see her doctor?
I guess denial is an incredibly powerful force.
(And I can empathize with your friend. I think my baby just dropped as well, and the resulting nerve pain and pressure on my cervix is pretty freaking painful.)
July 7th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
I caught a snippet of that show once, and the women who I saw profiled (at least three) all had a similar story- they had never had regular periods in their life, so the lack of one was no surprise, they were already carrying “extra weight” or had some reason why gaining weight was no surprise (one had just quit smoking), and had been told that for some reason it was unlikely (if not downright impossible) that they would become pregnant.
One woman was under a doctors care for intense back pain when all of a sudden it turned out that she was in labor … and the only reason they figured it out was the crying baby she gave birth to.
I can’t watch too much of shows like that because they make me so sad / uncomfortable. I agree that denial has a lot to do with it, but the doctors treating these women obviously did them a disservice in not checking for pregnancy.
July 8th, 2009 at 1:26 am
Glinda admits that she is not as svelte as she once was, and even though I carry some extra weight around the tummy, it is very apparent that my growth is not simply “weight gain.” A pregnant tummy is hard in a way that extra fat is not.
July 8th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Oh, I totally agree with you. But if you are not just “un-svelte” and have more like a 3-inch cushion of fat (like me), the pregnancy part of the tummy is definitely more hidden. I could feel the difference in my tummy, but if I didn’t know what it was, would i have? I don’t want to say it’s impossible, that’s all.
July 8th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
All I want to say is that people who can’t even tell whether or not they are pregnant are not the kind of people who should be reproducing in the first place.
July 9th, 2009 at 12:49 am
mini_pixie, I’m right there with ya. I agree that on the lower half, it’s still a bit mushy, but right under the boobs? Hard as a rock.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:36 am
Once the baby starts kicking and moving around there really is no way not to know.
I can also sympathize with your friend. It felt like the baby was going to drop out if I stood up too fast with my last pregnancy.
August 9th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
I had a baby and I didnt know I was pregnant until I went into labor. I have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrom so I have very irregular periods. Some will be very light, some heavy, some a few days, some more than a week and sometimes none at all for months. At one point I didnt have a period for 2 whole years!
When I got pregnant there were no symptoms at all. I only gained 10 pounds. Everyones weight fluctuates so I passed it off as that. I never felt kicking only slight “bubbling” that the doctor told me was gas. I had irregulkar periods through my pregnancy as I always have.
Doctors have always told me my chances of getting pregnant was slim to none. I recieve routine pregnancy tests at my doctors appointments and all were negative. I woke up in the middle of the night with some pretty bad cramping and I felt the need to have a bowel movement. Nothing happened after a long wait on the toilet so I decided it was probably constipation. I layed back down and tried to fall back asleep but the pain only got worse.
Fearing it was someting like apendesitis, I woke my fiance up and told him I needed to go to the ER. When I got there they did a pregnancy test and it was negative. They decided to do an internal ultrasound and found that the babys head was crowning. They rushed me up to the 4th floor where 20 minutes later I delivered my beautiful healthy baby girl.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:07 am
I knew I was pregnant from a couple of weeks in–there was no way I wasn’t sure, and I really felt it as the months went by. However, I did know someone who had a baby and supposedly had no idea she was pregnant. She was quite overweight already, and I think had gyn problems so missing periods wasn’t anything odd to her. But still, it was strange. We came into work, asked how Jane (not her name) was doing, as she had left early because she was ill, and was told “She had a baby.” “No, really, where is she?” “She had a baby!” “You mean she adopted? That’s great!” “No, she gave birth–she didn’t know she was pregnant.” “You ARE joking, right?”….