I can never understand that!

She on a boat. Maybe overweight. She didn't want to be discharged. Concealed as though didn't know. The other stuff re spotting and gas you prollee already read. Good enough.

In the emergency room at an Air Force hospital.

The girl was over weight, confused and in lots of pain. After all was said and done, the girl was so happy she had a baby, and her parents jaws could not have been any lower to the floor.

My buddy had a woman come in complaining of chest pain. It was part on a half eaten sandwich under her... Never mind

IF she has irregular periods, this can happen.

And if she has the type of frame that hides the pregnancy, this can also contribute. Some women just aren't that aware of what their bodies are doing. They think the kicking is gas and so on.

She had been on some sort of experimental birth control and it failed her. She was six months along and kept gaining weight much to her husband's dismay.

Well after six months of not knowing, it was discovered around month 7 and she gave birth not long after that.

Major fail that was to say the least!

And this woman was highly educated having a graduate degree and then some best I remember.

Strangest thing I've ever witnessed! *eek*

I'm quite sure that if I were deployed on a ship, my stomach would be doing some serious somersaults daily. Like all day.

And as I said on the other thread maybe she spotted during her entire pregnancy.

Back in the '70s I was visiting a friend in the hospital, and they chased us out for a few minutes while they changed some dressings. I wandered over to maternity to look at the babies through that big window. There was a 50-ish woman there, a bit on the stocky side; I asked if one of the babies was her grandchild. She shook her head, pointed to a little boy and said he was hers. She said she thought she'd just gotten to "the change" because everything stopped, and she came to the ER when she started having abdominal pains. She and her husband were both stunned that she was pregnant. She laughed and said she was still trying to figure out how to tell her other five children, the youngest of which was just graduating from high school.


.

She was heavyset and in her early 40s, said she'd had light bleeding every month. Fortunately, she found out a couple of weeks before she delivered thanks to Braxton-Hicks contractions that sent her to a doctor.

It's not the usual thing but it does happen.

Our German landlady was tall and wide. She didn't know.

went to the ER for severe pains, which of course were labor pains. The lady was my neighbor many years ago. Because of her weight, the baby didn't show. The really strange part of her story is that she already had 5 children so this wasn't a new thing for her. I knew her quite well, and I do believe she really didn't know. Perhaps it was because, in her mind, she really didn't WANT something like that to be true.

One was younger - early 20s - and heavyset. She thought her birth control method was adequate, she had a history of being irregular, and the baby was on the small side. The other was about 50 and already had 3 kids (the last one of which was a surprise). She told her doctor she thought she was pregnant, it felt like the others, but he was certain that it was just the onset of menopause. Now, both these instances were in the early 70s, home pregnancy tests weren't available, and in the latter case doctors trusted their theories more than their patients' beliefs.

It was kid number nine, she was big, and in her forties. She was on the stupid side, and thought it was cute to tell everyone that she had not known she was pregnant.

Back in the day, she was tall and slender, very athletic, had irregular periods and used BCPs to try and to regulate them, but with poor results. On hindsight, she had no symptoms like vomiting, but around 7 months she was complaining about feeling bloated and gaining weight which she attributed to a change in her Rx BCPs. She never looked pregnant and had always been told it would be very difficult for her to conceive because of her reproductive probs.

She liked to wear tight button fly jeans and fussed about leaving the top 2 buttons open because she was getting too fat. Then one day she got bad abdominal cramps which she attributed to her screwy menses, and went to the clinic where she found out she was having early labor pains. Huge shocker when she delivered a fine baby boy.

and very heavy, had this happen. She did go to the doctor because she knew something was wrong, but he diagnosed a uterine cyst and ordered surgery. That when the pregnancy was discovered.

Presumably this exact scenario couldn't happen today, because I'm sure ultrasound would have been tried (I would think?), but this was maybe 45 years ago. More recently, about 25 years ago, a woman gave birth ( or maybe just went into labor) on a Long Island Railroad train who had no idea she was pregnant.

Not quite as extreme - I had no idea I was pregnant until I was 16 weeks. Sure made for a short pregnancy!

she was no that heavy either. She went to the hospital with severe abdominal pain and came out with a daughter. Have known some women who never even looked pregnant and delivered full term babies.

at least from the ones i have seen in the news.

She was a big girl and was used to having her periods now and then rather than on a regular monthly bases. One day she called her sister to have her take her to the ER because she was hurting pretty bad inside. So Sis takes her to the ER and worrying that her sis might have something seriously wrong with her but to their surprise the doctor who examined her said you're Pregnant and fixing to have a baby. the baby is 40 years old now and doing fine. Janie had no idea that she was pregnant. None of the usual stuff like morning sickness or a big belly. The doctor told her she carried her baby in her hips rather than in her abdomen

It's not too hard to think you're not pregnant if you have a few spotty incidents (not unusual at all) and your periods were weird beforehand.

Can't say I'm not jealous of anybody who doesn't noticeably change shape. My kid was so damn big I had strangers asking me if I was having twins before the pee dried on the stick.

among other reasons, pregnancy tests are almost always ordered for any abdominal complaint in a woman of child bearing age.

woman I knew back in the day. She was kinda chubby, but in no way obese. It was clear to everyone that she was pregnant, but her friends never directly confronted her, since she maintained that she was fine. She wasn't some young girl, she was well into her 20's, college-degreed and gainfully employed. Suddenly she had a baby. Surprise! Not. Friends were supportive, but she returned to work like nothing had happened. Never really admitted to the pregnancy, but didn't try to hide the child or anything. The stork brought it, I guess. I have no idea how people deny a pregnancy in the face of, well, the pregnancy. More powerful at denying things than I could ever be.

I've given birth to three and don't remember a day my body didn't remind me something was a bit off.

I worked with a woman who was pregnant and didn't know it. Not only did she not know it, nobody in her family or anybody who worked with her even guessed.

She failed to show up to work one morning and her son came in to fill in for her (she was a meatcutter in a Restaurant/Bar/Hotel establishment).

Her son told everybody the news that she gave birth the night before.

to acknowledge let alone even attempt to deal with?

Crappy diet, drugs/alcohol, poor choice in choosing sex partners, spending habits...

People do stunning things. You can't imagine it until it's you, and believe me, we all have a spot where it can be us. That spot might be a lot harder to reach in some than others but it's there.

It's also very hard to comprehend how different we are. We have astoundingly different levels of "intelligence" in various areas. One of those is kinesthetic and body awareness. Michael Jordan's body awareness is so much higher than mine that I can hardly comprehend it. He knows where he is in space in an entirely different way. Some women have such a poor perception of their physical selves (men too) that, combined with whatever emotional response they might have to pregnancy makes it absolutely possible for them to be unaware. Hopefully they can adjust fast and make up for the bonding time those who know have while the baby's in utero.

So I can totally see where she is coming from.

We were part of the initial "Women at Sea" program back in the late 1970's through 1980's. Had this small woman, maybe 5'1", 115 lbs. - who worked down in the engine room (so she was always in a jumpsuit uniform over skivvies like the guys because it was hot and dirty down there), and very athletic and curvy - the type they called a "Pocket Venus" back in the bad old days.
She got married a couple months after coming aboard, and went on birth control pills immediately afterwards. Four months the wedding, she complained about putting on a "little" weight which she attributed to going on the Pill and more eating out with the new husband. Six months later - when we were underway for a couple weeks, she began feeling cramped and bloated for long periods of time. So she went to the corpsman to get an antacid...and they called in a helicopter to get her off as quickly as possible.
She was just over eight months along; had a healthy full term baby boy three and a half weeks later. And she only looked like she had put on around 15 lbs. the whole time.

So yes, it's very possible to not know you're pregnant until the last minute. Especially if you do hard, physical work so you're body always seems to be under stress.

Haele

but every woman's body is different. I can understand the irregular periods, and even the absence of weight gain, but I can't fathom that a baby moving would feel anything like gas. Maybe mine were overly-active, but there's no way I would have interpreted those kicks as gas or bloating. I definitely felt movement, and it was daily beginning around the 5th month or so. And I would think that once your milk comes in, that would be a clue as well? Again, not judging, as I know our bodies respond differently, just genuinely curious how some signs could be missed (apart from deniability.)