I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant Until the Seventh Month

Don’t judge, let me explain

Photo by Josue Michel on Unsplash

I wasn’t obese, and I wasn’t on drugs. I was still nursing my eight-month-old son, while working and going to school. I knew I wanted more children, but this little guy snuck up on me.

Working at the hospital, furthering my education, and breastfeeding is a lot to handle. The hospital was a 20-minute drive from home; school was a 30-minute drive in the opposite direction. I was pumping my breasts every break I got and sometimes I slept at a friend’s house or napped in my car. I was living on granola bars, coffee, and chocolate.

The infant I already had stayed home with his father, who fed him the milk I was storing in our freezer. It wasn’t long before I couldn’t keep up and we had to start supplementing. By that time, I was already pregnant, but I didn’t know it because I hadn’t had a normal menstrual cycle.

What I did have was bleeding that I thought was my period. It was so heavy my street clothes were flooded and I came home from work in a set of scrubs provided by the hospital. This bleeding was enough to convince me I wasn’t pregnant. Later I figured out I had experienced a threatened miscarriage.

Ironically, I worked as a nurse in the hospital’s obstetrics (OB) ward, taking care of women and babies after delivery while having no clue a baby was on its way to me.

At home we heard about a neighbor who needed an abortion. I felt sad for her, not realizing I was further along than she was.

A bit of fatigue and nausea did bother me. I felt exhausted, but who wouldn’t with my schedule? I figured my immune system was reacting to stress and my stomach was protesting all the caffeine I needed to keep going. I paid no attention to the “gurgles” in my tummy.

My midsection was expanding but I chalked it up to lack of exercise. Jogging suits were in vogue that winter and I loved wearing elastic sweatpants everywhere, including to work. Like the other nurses, I changed in the locker room into a scrub uniform for my 11pm to 7:30 am graveyard shift.

Eventually, a coworker pointed out the fact that my belly was growing. She told me the consensus of the OB staff on nightshift: “We want a pregnancy test, and we want to hear heart tones.”

I peed in a cup, insisting “I had a period three months ago. Even if I were pregnant, I couldn’t be more than twelve weeks, so it wouldn’t be showing. You guys are crazy.”

They sent the urine to the lab, which called a while later with the news: my pregnancy test was positive. In an exam room, the doppler broadcast a galloping fetal heartbeat.

I just remember wanting to be alone. When I got the chance, I cried. Then I laughed. Then I cried again and laughed again. I didn’t know how I felt, or how my husband Ken would feel.

I called home as the sun was rising. He was always up early and answered the phone in the midst of feeding our eleven-month-old. I explained what had happened.

“Well,” he said, “I guess the joke’s on us. But what a nice joke.”

Hearing those words made me feel better.

The doctor measured my belly and did an internal exam. Ultrasound was not a routine procedure for pregnancy then, at least not in our hospital. By my size and feeling the weight of my uterus, she estimated I was 20 weeks gestation, or five months along. She gave me a due date in June.

In an effort to bond with the baby-to-be, I went shopping for maternity clothes and a few baby things. I’d given away almost all the old ones. Thinking about a pregnancy while I continued to live life in the fast lane was hard. I drank less coffee, ate less chocolate and tried to eat regular meals.

On the evening of April 20th, I felt some mild contractions during the drive to work. They became more intense as I went about my routine tasks, feeding newborns and changing diapers. When I had to stop what I was doing, bend my knees slightly and lean over the cribs to breathe, it seemed the time had come to let others know.

I walked over to Labor and Delivery at 4 am and told the nurses there, “I think you’d better admit me.”

To all accounts, this baby was coming early. The doctor ordered an X-ray and I called my husband. We lived out in the country, and it wouldn’t be easy for him to find someone to watch our children while he came to the hospital. In a way, I was glad he wasn’t there, because I didn’t want to be worrying about his feelings right now. I had to deal with my own fears.

Caring for premature infants was a part of my job. I knew that some of them didn’t make it, and doing extreme interventions was a controversial approach. Dooming them to lifelong disabilities or causing serious discomfort when a good outcome was unlikely seemed wrong. But, as I labored in my hospital bed, I made a firm decision: I want them to do everything they can to save my baby.

The X-ray revealed a breech fetus, weighing at least five pounds. The weight was reassuring, the position not so much. My water broke. The baby was coming.

Breech position meant that his head was under my ribcage and his buttocks sat firmly in the bowl of my pelvis. In 1984 the standard of care for breech infants was cesarean birth. I refused the surgery. In the 1970’s, when I started my nursing career, breeches were delivered vaginally. I had witnessed many, some were breath-holders, especially for first-time moms, but most were accomplished without much trouble.

A breech baby could get stuck in the birth canal. It might be a very difficult delivery. The doctor asked me to sign a form saying I understood that my infant might die or be brain damaged, and I alone would be responsible for those terrible outcomes. I signed in triplicate.

Once in the delivery room, I pushed only three times before Jacob slid out of my body. He was well flexed, in a cross-legged lotus position as if he was meditating inside my womb. He was full term and weighed six pounds four ounces.

When the baby cried, I looked over to see Ken walk in the delivery room. He got there in time to greet his newborn son, and I was glad to see him. The time was 7:20 am. My coworkers teased me because I delivered with ten minutes left in my shift.

Jacob is 42 years old now. When we talk about his birth story he says, “Mom, you still don’t listen to me.”