Now, while I lack the prenatal experiences of say, Michelle Duggar, or even Octomom, I have had three kids, each with varying degrees of pregnancy related symptoms.
[super- human birthing machine]
In two of the instances, I spent the first three months primarily eating soda crackers and drinking warm sprite just to be able to get out bed in the morning. I stayed abnormally tired with my last one, going to bed 20 minutes after I would get home from work, sleeping late, napping as often as I could get away with it, so much so that my husband said that it was like living with a narcoleptic. Honey, could you pass the....zzzzzzzzzzz. And in each of the pregnancies, I looked as though I had swallowed, not one, not two, but three large bowling balls.
Naturally, I watched this show with a fair amount of skepticism.
One of the women on the show had been told she couldn't get pregnant, and to be fair, she was a pretty good sized person with some other health problems. She actually seemed the most believable and had never gotten pregnant, despite not being on any type of birth control for over 16 years. She had symptoms all throughout her pregnancy, constantly getting sick, swollen feet, barely able to walk, extreme tiredness, but apparently none of those were extreme enough to go to the doctor. I have a hangnail, and my butt is down there whining for him to remove it.
[not my finger]
One day she takes her mom to the hospital for dialysis, and was experiencing a lot of "pressure down there" and had a horrible backache since the night before. Her mom insists that she get seen by the doctors, and they take her moaning, and eventually screaming to a room for an evaluation. She tells the triage nurse that she *really* has to go the bathroom, and the next thing you know, bam!... she poops out a baby in the ER bathroom toilet. The nurse runs back in...HORRIFIED at the sight, tells the woman not to look down into the bowl and hustles her back into the bed. Others rush in to fish the poor little baby out and try to save it. She was still screaming that she still "had to go" and it was right then that she found out not only did she just "poop" out a baby, but there is another one coming. TWINS.
Sadly, the 2nd baby didn't make it, they were both premature, but the one born in the bathroom is alive and well today. A true miracle, really. I was thinking about this later...ok, let's say that she didn't know she was pregnant, and had no reason to suspect that she ever could get pregnant. That part seems plausible and I am willing to go with it. But if find yourself with a lot of "pressure down there", with a strong, primeval urge to go, and you have been up all night previously, sweating, gripping the sheets in your teeth with stomach and back pain, you are not experiencing an "abnormal bowel movement". No amount of Ex-lax, Metamucil, Rolaids or Gas-X is going to fix your problem.
If, at intervals of a minute apart, your stomach gets hard as a rock, despite the fact that you haven't done a situp in over 20 years, those are not contractions that will ever occur, even if you are severely constipated. Later, when you find yourself actually able to "go", and look down to view what you assume to be a Guinness Book worthy turd and then see hair on it, guess what? You get to name this one and are legally bound to support it for the next 18 to 21 years.
Another lady, approximately 30-ish years old, had already given birth to 3 children and was working at Burger King. She went into the bathroom with excruciating stomach pains, and delivered her baby right there on the BK bathroom floor. *GROSS*
[how would you like to give birth here?]
... I don't even like to pee in there, much less consider giving birth to a baby near one of those stalls. Even the parking lot would have been a better option! How would you like to be the new guy at Burger King whose responsibility it is to have to clean the bathrooms that day? Two words after seeing the aftermath of all that: I quit.
[Creepy BK guy does not make me want to buy a whopper with cheese, they need to fire their marketing team]
Personally, I didn't believe her at all. She already had three kids, none had the same father; she and her children were living with her own dad, and she was going out partying with her friends every night. I wondered how she had time to do that when she had three children at home, but I shouldn't be judgemental, now should I? I figured she knew she was pregnant, but if she told her dad, "hey...let's play good news, bad news"...he would have hit the roof and maybe kicked her out. Better to not say anything and then act surprised when the baby just suddenly pops out on the BK bathroom floor. What? How did that get there? I had no idea. I am shocked. Sadly, they showed her and her 5 month old "surprise" and the narrator announced that she was 4 months pregnant with her 5th child. If I were her dad, having to help support her and all of her kids, I would start crushing up birth control pills in her morning juice, I'm just sayin'.
Another lady on there had numerous symptoms throughout her pregnancy. FWIW, her and her boyfriend did seem a tad on the slow side, so for awhile, I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. That being said, she had gained weight, had nausea, tiredness, swollen feet, would only eat never before liked Chinese food for every meal, her boobs were 10 times their normal size and strangly leaking, and yet it never occurred to her that she might be pregnant. Afterall, she had taken a pregnancy test a little more than 9 months prior and it came up negative. Hmmm...in each of my pregnancies, when I suspected that I was pregnant, I bought every single kind of test made, and peed on all of them...just to make sure. In addition, she thought she had "extreme gas" throughout her pregnancy, and could have sworn she had had her period every single month, but oddly enough never had to restock her feminine care supply...in 9 months.
Here is another little tip that you might be pregnant: Your internal organs do not just spontaneously "protrude" from your body at any given time. That would be a baby foot, butt, back, or knee trying to poke its way out of your body.
[Not your kidneys]
As far as extreme gassiness goes, and while I am not a gastroenterologist, I do know that even the most extreme "I just ate 4 chili dogs, a pound of onion rings, and a head of cabbage" gas will not blow your stomach up to the point that it looks as though you just swallowed a watermelon whole.
[Not gas]
All in all, it was a train wreck of a show; I wanted to turn it off, but couldn't do it. I do believe that there are people out there that will suffer no symptoms, are already on the big side and may not gain weight throughout the entire thing, and in fact, may even lose a little weight. But I don't believe that they were able to go through 9 months of growing a human inside of them and not have a single solitary clue that they are pregnant. Just not buying it.
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