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Unexpected Births (Unrecognized / Denied Pregnancies)

Mikefule

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Dec 9, 2009
Messages
1,279
Location
Lincolnshire UK
Young girl feels ill. Goes to bed. Falls into a coma. 4 days later, she wakes up to find she's had a baby.

She has a rare condition which means she has two wombs. One continued to menstruate and she had no visible signs of being pregnant.

Mother and child doing fine.

Quite a lovely story, but also a very strange situation for the people concerned, and an unusual medical condition. Worth reading all the way through.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-47282950
 
There are many stories of "surprise babies"
But, it turns out, denied pregnancies — cases in which a woman is genuinely subjectively unaware of her pregnancy, sometimes up until the birth itself — are more common than you think.

Several studies put the frequency of pregnancy denial at 20+ weeks somewhere in the range of 1 in 500 and denial until birth around 1 in 2500 which is to say there's a good chance that this has happened to one of your Facebook friends, too.

Source "Surprise Babies" - Not as Rare as You Think and 3 scholarly articles are cited as sources for the figures
 
Happened to a good friend of mine, actually. She was quite a large girl so no visible signs, and she was on medication which made her periods very irregular and sometimes cease altogether so she didn't think anything of it. Baby was lying facing her back, so she didn't feel any kicking.

Woke up one day with terrible pain, mum called the doctor (friend was 20 and living at home). Doctor came, examined her, had no idea what was wrong and called an ambulance. On the way to the main hospital, one of the paramedics thought to time the pains and diverted the ambulance to the maternity unit. Baby was born about half an hour after arrival, fit and well.

I've lost touch with that friend since we moved, her daughter is the same age as one of my children and I often wonder how she turned out. She was a lovely little baby and toddler, and her mum coped surprisingly well, after the intitial shock!
 
These stories amaze me, or used to, because my own experience of pregnancy was the polar opposite. I'd feel decidedly pregnant from the earliest possible time - when still counting on my fingers and frowning - with nausea and other (often more personal) signs.

Everyone's different, of course. One of my cousins reckoned she had no nausea all the way through whereas I'd lose weight because I couldn't keep anything down.
 
I had a friend this happened to about 18 years ago. She was a curvy lady so nothing showed and she had absolutely no idea and neither did anyone else. A gang of us went out one Wednesday night. She said she had been feeling unwell and was going to her Doctors as she thought she had a kidney infection she had been in mild pain and discomfort since the Monday. I remember telling her to go and not to leave it too long. Anyway we all had a great night and she didn't drink as much as she usually did and went on to iced water. Friday morning the phone rings and a mutual friend who was with us says "Guess what?!! X has had a baby boy this morning!!!" I am like " What are you on about don't be daft!" she says " If you don't believe me ring her later... she had the baby in the bedroom as her other half was getting dressed in the bathroom" I replied " Impossible! Don't be daft ...are you winding me up? She said she was feeling under the weather and thought she had a kidney infection". Anyway I rang her later and could actually hear the baby crying which convinced me. She had a very quick labour at home with no problems at all. Both were checked over and all was well. Before this happened I used to scoff at such stories considering them impossible for all manner of reasons but yes it does happen and it is a shock to all when it does. Especially the new mum!
 
My husband still rates one of his finest ED moments as the diagnosis of extremely late pregnancy in a young woman some years ago. She had no idea either. Came into A&E with pains, left a couple of days later with a baby!
 
By a funny coincidence I bumped into the friend who rang me about the baby yesterday. I very seldom see her maybe once a year or longer. We both reminised about the event and she said the lad is now in Uni. It was over nineteen years ago not eighteen. We had a chuckle about it.
 
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