Amanda Prentice prayed for years that she and her husband would become pregnant, but she never got to enjoy that excitement of seeing two lines appear on a pregnancy test or seeing her growing baby on an ultrasound. Instead, after struggling for four years with what she thought was infertility, one day she woke up, and there was her baby girl -- the one she had unknowingly delivered -- waiting for her.
According to WSMV-TV, Prentice became pregnant without knowing it and carried the baby nearly nine months with no hint that anything was different. It wasn't until she started having seizures and her husband took her to the hospital that they had any idea they were going to be parents ... and soon.
After a dangerous spike in blood pressure, Amanda fell unconscious, and her family learned why. It was due to pregnancy complications (which sound much like preeclampsia), and doctors delivered her baby five hours later. When she awoke two days later, doctors delivered the news to her.
She told the station: "The doctor came in and said, 'I've got good news and bad news.' He said, 'Your blood pressure has skyrocketed here in the last few days, but you've got a baby.'" And that's when she met her beautiful, perfectly healthy, little girl, who she named Allie McKinley Rose.
A beautiful and touching story for sure, but not drastically different from others we've heard over the years about women who give birth without ever knowing they're pregnant. In fact, TLC has a whole series titled I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant. Still, each of these stories amazes me and really makes me wonder how on earth this could happen.
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Is it because these women had incredibly easy pregnancies that didn't involve the sheer and utter exhaustion, the nausea, backaches, and other oh-so-telling symptoms that both of mine did? Or is it because much of what we attribute to pregnancy is really in our minds ... or at least amplified by the way we think we're supposed to feel. I would have tried to harm you severely had you suggested it was all in my head while it was happening, but looking back, I do wonder. Have we become so accustomed to thinking pregnancy is full of aches and pains that to some degree we bring at least some of them on ourselves?
I don't know the answer, and it would be pretty cruel to do any sort of placebo test to try and get a scientific conclusion. But each of these cases does always make me wonder how much better I might have felt during my pregnancies if I didn't know I was pregnant?
Do you feel like just knowing you're pregnant can make symptoms worse? Can you ever imagine carrying a baby to term, not knowing you were pregnant?
Image via WSMV-TV
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Comments 124
Well, perhaps I can write off some pregnancy symptoms to the placebo effect. However, when you have what feels like a baby elephant stomping on your bladder in the middle of the night for the last 2 months, I don't know what else in the world could mimic that.
I got to be the size of a whale with all 4 of my kids. I couldnt imagine not knowing at least by the 3rd trimester. In the first one I can see not knowing. I didnt find out I was preggo till i was 2 months along and I only took it cause I couldnt imagine the flu lasting or recurring for months on end. Lol:)
I figured it out in month 2 that I was pregnant with my first. For a while I thought it was just food poisoning. But then I started thinking about how long it'd been since my period, and a quick trip to the doctor cleared things up. I've only had one baby, and that pregnancy was rough! It's hard to imagine not knowing, but every pregnancy is different I'm told, and people experience different symptoms. Especially with her having been told she was infertile, she didn't even consider pregnancy as a possibility. It was one of the furthest possibilities from her mind, even.
Congratulations to their family! The picture of the baby is adorable. Super cute.
I believe just knowing makes symptoms worse. With my first pregnancy, I was two months along with now signs or sickness. The day after I found out, I had morning sickness.
How lucky that both her & her child survived! I'm jealous in a good way...I would do anything for a baby, but sadly am too unhealthy to even consider having a child.
It is indeed totally possible and many pregnancies are COMPLETELY asymptomatic. Aside from a missed period or two, which should NEVER be ignored, symptoms don't define a pregnancy. Even in a very small woman, it is possible for a fetus to grow straight up instead of out, which is what usually makes for an absence of the big bulging belly associated with pregnancy. During my second pregnancy, I lost a total of 27lbs, and I swear I'm bigger now than I was 14 months ago, when 9 months pregnant. I knew only because for me, sudden weight loss is usually a pregnancy indicator. I wish I would have known that the first time around.
What an amazing story. I do understand how some woman don't know. Its not about "your not in tuned wiht your body", usually its about a woman having prior conditions that make it hard to notice a pregnancy.
I still can't fathom how some women can NOT know that they're pregnant.