Ritu Singh
The answer is yes! Sometimes it is possible for a woman to carry a baby in her belly without ever realizing she is pregnant. Seems straight out of fiction but it's actually true and more common than you may think.
Often we hear news stories about how a woman goes into hospital with stomach pains and comes out with a baby! And we wonder- How is it possible that all this while she didn’t realise that she was pregnant.
According to a report, about one in every 450 mothers-to-be claims, "I didn't know I was pregnant" until labor begins. Yes, such a phenomenon is both amazing and scary at the same time!
More often, this phenomenon has been attributed to a woman's denial or some sort of mental illness. But research/survey shows that only a minority of such surprise pregnancy cases can be attributed to personality disturbances (eight percent) or schizophrenia (five percent).
Such pregnancies have been reported in perfectly sane and normal women and in the absence of any obvious pregnancy symptom, they remain quite oblivious of their pregnancy.
How do you even suspect a pregnancy when you are still having your periods (irregular though), no weight gain, no nausea, and little to no abdominal swelling. So what is this really? Such experiences are a product of what is known as a 'cryptic pregnancy'.
What is a cryptic pregnancy?
A pregnancy where there is little or no detectable HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) in the mother's system and even the fetus may go undetected by doctors, until delivery.
HCG is the hormone that makes a home pregnancy test turn positive. A baby that produces very little amount of HCG might fail the pregnancy test.
In a cryptic pregnancy, the lining of the uterus is periodically shed when the mother bleeds, therefore never allowing the HCG to building up enough to secrete into the blood or urine, therefore, causing negative pregnancy tests.
Among pregnant women, 1 in 450 doesn't know her status until week 20 or later, and 1 in 2,500 is oblivious until she actually goes into labor.
Characteristics/symptoms of a cryptic pregnancy are:
- Negative urine, blood pregnancy tests and ultrasounds
- Bleeding/continued periods: Majority of the women who go through a cryptic pregnancy continue to have some sort of "period-like" bleeding (spotting, light bleeding) through the entire pregnancy.
- Early labor signs that occur off and on for weeks or even months
- Weight loss/gain
- Typical standard pregnancy symptoms-nausea, vomiting, food aversion, frequent urination, heart burn which are often dismissed and mistaken for some other condition
- Slow growth of the abdomen/pregnant belly, so a neat bump might not be visible
- An extended gestational period, typically of 17 months or longer
Causes of a cryptic pregnancy?
Studies suggest that such cryptic pregnancies occur when women suffer from a hormonal imbalance. Following could be the possible reasons :
- Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), a common endocrine system disorder among women of reproductive age.
- Perimenopause, which can begin as early as age 30, and go undetected.
- Recent pregnancy, where hormones may not have time to go back to normal before falling pregnant again
- If the woman is still breastfeeding
- The woman has a very low body fat percentage
- The woman has recently used, or is currently using, a birth control method that continually releases hormones into the body.
- If the woman is in extreme stress
