How Do You Not Know Your Pregnant
Due west hen Klara Dollan, then 22, woke upward at 4am on the mean solar day she was due to beginning her new task, she thought her agonising stomach cramps signalled her period existence "dorsum with a vengeance". She had been taking the pill with no break for more than six months, but had stopped about two weeks before. The waves of pain left her pale and shaking, but she didn't feel she could call in sick on her first day – so she took some paracetamol on her mother's communication, and caught the autobus then the tube from the home they shared in Cricklewood in north-west London into the city.
Hours subsequently, Dollan was in Hampstead'due south Majestic Free infirmary, cradling a newborn baby girl: completely healthy and carried to term. Dollan had given birth by herself in the bathroom of her flat, later existence sent habitation sick from work; a neighbour had heard her screams of labour and called an ambulance. When Dollan rang her mother and told her to come to the maternity ward, the reply was: "Simply you weren't significant this morn!"
Amelia, now iii, was a "consummate surprise", says Dollan, which many struggle to believe. How could she not take known she was pregnant? But the more pertinent question may be: why would she take thought she was?
Dollan had broken up with her boyfriend (Amelia'southward father) five months before her girl was born, and she was used to not getting periods. She had gained a little weight, simply chalked that up to the breakdown. A mirror selfie she took betrays no trace of her being seven and a half months pregnant. "There was cypher showing. I wasn't feeling it. I had no symptoms, no cravings, no nausea – null. I was out of the loop of my pregnancy."
In fact, the offset time the thought she might exist pregnant crossed her mind was every bit she was giving nativity. By this signal, information technology was articulate this was no menstruum. "My body was simply telling me to push button the pain away. Then I saw a caput coming out." What was she thinking? "I couldn't tell yous, honestly. I was in absolute stupor."
Concluding week, in that location were reports around the world of an farthermost case of a woman existence surprised by her own full-term pregnancy: a Bangladeshi woman gave birth to a healthy and expected infant boy, only to learn nearly a month later that she was carrying twins in a second uterus (they were likewise born healthy, 26 days later her first kid). The concrete circumstances in that example, and the fact that the woman knew she was pregnant with one child – but not 3 – clearly make information technology highly unusual. But the phenomenon of a adult female carrying a baby to term without knowing she is significant is more than mutual than ane might think; as Dollan found out subsequently giving birth to Amelia, this is known as "ambiguous pregnancy". A 2002 paper published in the British Medical Journal estimated that it occurs in near one in every 2,500 pregnancies, suggesting about 320 cases in the Great britain every yr.
"This is not a especially unusual phenomenon," says Helen Cheyne, a professor of midwifery at the University of Stirling'due south Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professions Research Unit in Glasgow. "It'due south rare – just it'south not that rare." In midwifery and obstetrics and gynaecology circles, she says, if you oasis't come up across a cryptic pregnancy yourself, it is non unusual to know someone – or know someone who knows someone – who has.
Early in Cheyne'south career as a clinical midwife, in 1982 or 1983, she remembers caring for a adult female in the postnatal ward of the Princess Royal maternity hospital in Glasgow who had not known she was meaning until she went into labour. She had given nascence before – by so her children were teenagers – and she had chalked up her irregular periods and weight gain to age. Cheyne remembers her and her husband being in total shock. "I've never forgotten that. She was completely credible."
And nonetheless, she adds, it is "very, very hard to get your head around". "The feeling of a baby moving inside yous – if you've had children, it's very hard to imagine how you might not recognise that for what it is. Having an 8lb baby inside you lot …" She laughs. She too adds that it is not only possible for significantly overweight women, as is commonly assumed.
Although the research is sparse – every bit one might look, given the primal element of surprise – Cheyne says cryptic pregnancies accept been recorded around the world, dating back centuries. In fact, information technology was more understandable when pregnancy diagnoses were dependent on indicators such as the loss of periods and nausea. With highly accurate modernistic tests, says Cheyne: "It's very piece of cake to diagnose pregnancy – if you expect to be significant."
Simply the phenomenon cannot be explained away every bit women only not feeling or noticing the signs of pregnancy, variable though they are. "Many people who are not expecting to go pregnant do get pregnant, and recognise that they are," says Cheyne, adding that that is true even of women in war zones, refugee camps and other challenging situations where there may not exist access to tests or healthcare. "If pregnancy symptoms were by and large nebulous and non hands detected, [cryptic pregnancies] would happen all the time – so I retrieve it must exist something more particular to the symptoms experienced by these particular women."
Cryptic pregnancy has been reported every bit a "psychological phenomenon", says Cheyne, but she does non believe that applies to all cases. "Pregnancy is obviously a physical thing, just becoming a mother is social and psychological as well – maybe pregnancy is as well."
Understandably, when cases make headlines (a representative example: "Adult female had no idea she was meaning – until she gave birth in the toilet"), they tend to be received with incredulity, scepticism and lurid interest, as the stuff of soap operas and low-rent documentary series. Xv-yr-old Sonia'south "surprise baby" on EastEnders in 2000 made a bright impression on a generation of immature women, while the The states television series I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant ran for four seasons. (In 2015, information technology was reprised for special episodes virtually women who had not ane but two cryptic pregnancies, titled I Even so Didn't Know I Was Meaning.)
That a woman could undergo and so transformative a physiological experience every bit pregnancy without having any sensation of information technology seems to trigger deep-seated atheism, particularly among those who accept experienced pregnancy. Dollan says people have questioned her common sense, her connexion to her own torso, and even the truthfulness of her story. She has found some mothers to exist specially judgmental.
"When I tell them I didn't have whatever cravings or forenoon sickness, that I didn't accept too bad a labour – that I just walked through pregnancy, if you volition – they are similar: 'How could yous non know?' And well-nigh: 'How could you alive with yourself non knowing?'" she says. "At that place's a huge stigma, not only being a young woman who's pregnant, simply a young adult female non knowing she's pregnant."
What about the reaction from men? "I don't think they grasp it at all. Any man I've told has been like, 'yes, absurd', and seemed to have forgotten instantly."
After she went public nigh her story on This Morning time four and a half months subsequently giving birth, Dollan says she was contacted by many women who had not spoken out about their ain cryptic pregnancies out of embarrassment. For her, the proof of her cryptic pregnancy is cocky-evident. "All I tin say to anyone who thinks I was hiding it is: why would I? Not only would I be putting my health at risk, I would be putting my child'southward health at risk."
That Amelia was carried to term and born salubrious, without aid, was a "miracle", says Dollan, given that she had been working 12-hour days, 60-hour weeks in her hospitality task for her entire pregnancy. "I'd non lived the life of a pregnant woman for the by viii months. I was a bar managing director, for Christ's sake. I was carrying crates of alcohol upwards flights of stairs until I was eight months pregnant."
Take chances is inherent to cryptic pregnancy, in the gestation period just well-nigh acutely in the act of childbirth. Women can become into labour without medical assistance, sometimes in dangerous situations or entirely lonely. Tragic cases where the child has been built-in dead or has died presently subsequently birth accept led to the mother's prosecution, says Cheyne, specially historically. "In a less understanding guild, a woman could be charged with infanticide. People would say: 'You must have known yous were pregnant – otherwise how else would this happen?'"
Even a relatively straightforward birth of a healthy babe can be highly traumatic. "Nearly parents have nine months to prepare," says Dollan. "I had two seconds – maybe a minute. Instantly, my life changed for ever."
Unlike in Dollan and the Bangladeshi mother's cases, by trauma can be an influential factor in pregnancies going unacknowledged, says Dr Sylvia Spud Tighe, a midwifery lecturer and the course director at the Section of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Limerick, Ireland. For her doctorate, Tighe studied curtained pregnancy: where women hide their babies from others and often, on some level, themselves. Given the link, she eschews the term "cryptic pregnancy" in favour of the broader catch-all "denied pregnancy", which takes in the possibility of both conscious and subconscious rejection (although she considers the former far more mutual).
The 30 women she interviewed revealed "fluctuating levels of awareness" of their pregnancies, says Tighe. Some told her, years after the fact, that "they absolutely knew" even though they had said at the fourth dimension that they hadn't. Others had confided in one person – often a partner, a family member or a health professional – before denying information technology to everyone else, sometimes in response to that reaction.
The principal motivator, she institute, was fear: these women were terrified, often for their own survival. There was also a shut association between concealed pregnancy and trauma such as kid sexual abuse, sexual assault and domestic violence, applicative to eleven of her 30 interviewees.
The remainder reported feeling more silenced past the social stigma of an unplanned pregnancy, fearing retribution or loss of command of their lives. (Although non all her case studies were Irish, Tighe said the country's cultural resistance to unplanned pregnancies was a factor.) Every bit such curtained pregnancy could exist "externally and internally mediated", says Tighe, one response was to cope by avoidance. "They might get this awareness of 'Could I be pregnant?', but they shut it downwardly because a pregnancy, in their current life circumstances, is a really major crisis."
Often the impact of this was but fully revealed with fourth dimension, and in many cases therapy. Her interviewees had been reflecting, says Tighe: "Whether it was half dozen years or xxx years later the event, they were looking back and they were ready to talk … Information technology's like a process of coming to terms." At the fourth dimension, however, they might feel only terror. Ane case study maintained that she had non known that she was pregnant until her third interview.
"We can avoid thoughts – we tin can push them from our minds," says Tighe, particularly if at that place are factors such as contraception or other medical explanations that tin bolster that denial. I example study, a nurse from rural Ireland, recalled "blocking the thought". "She said: 'If I thought I felt a motion, I told myself perhaps I had an ovarian cyst.' She did not want to get there in terms of acknowledging that she was pregnant."
These women's desperate measures, says Tighe, are indicative of the need for an compassionate response to concealed pregnancy from healthcare professionals in item – one that takes into account the lasting impacts of trauma on individuals' approaches to maternity. Sensational media reporting, also, did non assistance women to feel they could come frontward.
For those women who had not experienced significant trauma but concealed their pregnancies, Tighe says, having a child was simply not office of their "life programme".
Dollan says that having a babe with her ex-swain, aged 22, was non part of her plan. But she is also unequivocal: she did non know she was pregnant until she was in labour. "I would take had no qualms nearly telling my family if I did. Plainly, I would accept been nervous to tell them – but there would accept been a party, you lot know?"
She is also glowing virtually the joy that Amelia has brought into her and her mother'southward lives. "Information technology's funny she's and then lively," she says, "considering I didn't feel her moving around."
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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/mar/31/cryptic-pregnancies-i-didnt-know-i-was-having-a-baby-until-i-saw-its-head
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