Unaware of Pregnancy Until Delivery – Is It Possible?

Stories about the women, who had not suspected being pregnant before the day of delivery when they learned about it, are regularly published in the media, but most readers do not believe in them. But can it really happen to a woman that she will not know to the very birth that she is expecting a child?

Experts believe that a woman with normal weight may not know about the pregnancy up to the birth, but this is an exceptional case. The probability of not knowing this is much higher if a woman is overweight. 22-year-old Kate Hudson from Melbourne gave birth to a child about two weeks after she had learned about her pregnancy while relaxing with friends in Europe. According to the source, it was Kate’s 39th week of pregnancy, and she did not even know about it.

The girl says she did not have any symptoms. For example, her periods have not disappeared, there was no nausea, and weight gain was minimal. She wonders why she should have thought that she was pregnant. Her belly increased, but Kate believed she had constipation. And only when her breasts got larger, she started to be seriously worried.

President of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynecology in Australia and New Zealand, Professor Michael Permezel, said that out of 6000 births which took place every year at his clinic, women did not know about their pregnancy just in two or three cases. According to doctors, many moms have irregular periods, and a significant amount of the fair sex representatives do not suffer from preeclampsia, so the only sign of pregnancy is that their belly can be growing. And if the baby is not large, the belly will not make a woman suspect that she could fail to notice pregnancy.

For the vast majority of pregnant women, it is easy to notice pregnancy, the expert emphasized. However, there are cases when pregnancy may remain invisible. Most often this occurs when a woman is overweight or obese. In this case, no one draws attention to the increase in the size of the stomach.

Many very young ladies can develop the symptom of the so-called physiological denial of pregnancy because they do not want the baby; they are not emotionally prepared to deal with this situation and are afraid of the consequences of pregnancy. Such women do not even want to think about it. On the other hand, many of them may have false pregnancy, which is characterized by all the traditional clinical symptoms of pregnancy, such as weight gain, lactation, belly growth, and preeclampsia; however, there is no baby in the belly.