How can you NOT KNOW you are pregnant?

I know, baubles! If it had been the lilac tree, I wouldn't have minded so much....but the cabbage patch wasn't nearly so nice!

Cabbage patch, how very apt Marelli

glitabo, -I can imagine how things were for you. How very different things were then. Young girls now, just have no idea what it was like. When I was expecting my baby I wasn't allowed out anywhere at all, after I left school, and this was all through the summer. I was allowed into the garden, as far as the cabbages (after the cabbages, I could be seen from the neighbours' windows...)!

My daughter only found out she was preganant a week before the baby was born - it was not her first, she already had a 2 year old. During the pregnancy she had 'periods', didn't have any changes in her breasts and actually lost a stone in weight. My grandaughter weighed 71/2lbs at birth and is now a bright, bubbly 6year old.

I had two children, was determined not to have any more but when second was two and a half went to doc and said I thought I was pregnant but not sure as different to others. Told I was not! after test etc. went back couple of weeks later and said "are you sure?" yes!. Eventually I insisted on a scan but it was still a very different pregnancy. Ended up being berated by a very loud doctor who informed the whole clinic that this woman who had had two other children did not know she was pregnant and how stupid was she? I was 5 months gone by then so had little time to get used to the idea but was very unhappy about it as second child was a very difficult toddler and we ran our own business. That baby is now thirty years old and a delight as all three are but I still feel aggrieved about that rude doctor and how embarrassed I felt at the time.

I worked with a girl who had very irratic periods and did 'spot' sometimes. She then realised something seemed different, went to her GP and found out she was 6 months pregnant. Apparently the baby didn't move much and the odd flutter she put down to what my MIL used to call 'a wandering fart'.

The men were not left "holding the baby". They could move on to the next conquest. The women were conquered - and devalued. Another area where history was written by the victors.

It takes two to tango.

glitabo there were many fathers like that in our generation, it's how men in general thought of women. It's still, sadly, how some cultures think of women today. Happily times are changing and perhaps that will be true of all cultures eventually.

Interesting that there is no male version of the concept of a 'whore', rather men are/were regarded as 'Jack the Lad' - a completely different set of values.

And of course the huge majority of women in many countries are still without rights or a voice.

How I hate that phrase 'second hand goods'. I had forgotten all about it but what a terrible way to categorise women. There was such a lot going on in those days designed to keep women in their place.

glitabo - your story touched me very much. My older sister got pregnant when she was 20 and my father was all for throwing her out. My mother stood up to him (about the only time she did) and she kept the baby. When my niece was about 2, my sister met a man in a pub (I was babysitting) and made a date. She always told any man she met she had a baby, which shocked some in 1950. She asked my father if he would turn up and he said 'Well, I wouldn't want second hand goods'. My brother assured her that he certainly would - he did, and they got married.
My other sister also got pregnant by her long-term boyfriend and, in terror, got married in a rush, which she lived to regret.
This is probably one reason why I got married at 18 - I knew I dared not risk getting pregnant.
How different things are now, thank goodness.

A well known phenomenon .
Many years ago, my father was called to a house. He delivered a healthy, full term baby.
The future gran, watched the whole proceedings without a word!
After the child was delivered , she took it and shook it under her daughters nose saying!
" now! Will you say you haven't been with any boys?"

My neighbour, who already had two children, was rushed into hospital with suspected burst appendix and came home a couple of days later with a baby. The first she knew was when the doctor at a and e examined her and asked her if she wanted a girl or a boy. She'd hadn't missed any periods and her stomach stayed flat.

What stories, and how I identify with them.
At 18 I was very innocent, still at school, but I did have a boy friend much to my father's disapproval. One night I came home at 20 to 11, not really that late? My father was in a rage. He accused me of being up to no good he was very angry and violent and would not listen to me. My mother did nothing to stop this. He called me all manner of names.My father told me that I was second hand and no decent man would look at me. He also said that there are 2 types of women in the world, those who you marry and those you have sex with. I decided there and then that I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. I started to have sex with my boyfriend. I did not get pregnant but if I had, I would not have gone home. My father's violent outburst at this time had an affect on any sexual relationships I had for years.
I still do not forgive him.

Sorry, sorry to go on. I have been wanting to rage about this for years.

AFghanistani - Fijian or British?
advice please

Nationality for baby borned at Bastion.- I understand the armed forces lady is Finian. The baby was borned in Afghanistan and will be flown to the UK in an Hercules. Which Nationality is this baby then? Can someone throw some legal views on this?

Two friends of mine were both ''change of life'' babies.Both of their mothers being unaware they were pregnant until the last few weeks, as they were in their late forties and thought the absence of their periods was ''the change'' starting.
One friend's mother, on discovering she was in fact pregnant, said her biggest fear was telling her two adult daughters, the embarassment of knowing that she and their father were still having sex!.The other friend;s motherhad four almost grown up sons and after the initial shock of knowing she was about to give birth, was overjoyed when she had her longed for daughter.
Both my friends are now in their sixties.

Butter and baubles - ! xx

In the 1960s, when I was serving in the Army, a fellow NCO who lived in the same mess as me gave birth, insisting she did not know she was pregnant. She certainly didn't look pregnant (she was not overweight but what was termed, I think, "big boned"!) even in uniform, which was fairly close fitting. None of us had the slightest idea she was. She began having stomach pains one evening and it got so bad we sent for the duty medical orderly, who promptly gave her aspirin and told her to go to bed! She got worse and worse until the medical officer came and announced that she was in the end stages of labour and dashed her off to hospital where she gave birth to a seven poundish baby boy. I and my fellow mess members were quite stunned by the whole thing, realising that none of us would have known what to do if she had actually had this baby in-situ, as it were (and we were considered to be an intelligent bunch!). There was much discussion about towels and hot water but no-one had the slightest idea what they were for! We didn't have much that could have passed for maternal education in those days! She had to leave the Army as, in those days, mothers, married or otherwise, were not catered for. It is, I believe, different these days. You are allowed to continue to serve if you become a mother. I hope she and her then fiancee are now contented grandparents!

If you look into your family history, as I've been doing, it's quite an eye-opener comparing dates of marriages and births. To say nothing of all the people whose 'elder sister' was actually their Mum. There was a lot of it went on! And for my generation, the scandal about babies conceived and born while the mother's husband was a PoW or overseas on active service. They used to say it was the innocent ones who got caught out.

Marelli (((hugs))) and . You must have had to grow up so quickly. It takes huge strength of character to stand your ground against so much opposition. They certainly were different days.

Indeed it did, Marelli.

I didn't get pregnant before I was married (by good fortune!) but I well remember those times when I thought I might be and the terror of what would happen if I was.

They were awful times for this particular issue. Mother and child being looked on as shameful by everybody else.

Even those who got pregnant and then had a child at seven months carried the stigma for ever after, having to hide marriage/birth certificates etc.

This is one way in which, in my opinion, the 'old days' were much worse than modern times.

Well, absent (thank you!)...the big baggy jumper was a sort of horrible light brown....and I remember having to go to the Head's office to get told off about not wearing uniform! She probably knew what was up, but just told me to make more effort to wear the right stuff in the future (she would have some idea that my future didn't include going back after the exams anyway)! My results came back a few days after my daughter was born, and when I was home from hospital - without DD, as she was still awaiting adoption, as far as my parents were concerned - the local GP called in to see me. He gave me a right good telling off for not doing better (I only got 4, but I think I have quite a good excuse for that)!
Anyway, I actually remembered not really caring very much! I was used to being told off. I knew I wasn't stupid - maybe not brilliantly clever, but not stupid.
And it all worked out in the end, didn't it?

Does anyone remember reading Lorna Sage's 'Bad Blood'?
She came from a very repressive family, got pregnant and gave birth in the middle of doing her A Levels, went on to university and became Professor of English at East Anglia University.