Health/ Sciences / Humanity- Cryptic pregnancy

Ever wondered what could be the reason why a full grown woman would out of no-where, begin to complain of pains in her lower abdomen, so severe that she had to saunter into the hospital for checks only to be wheeled into the delivery room, and in no time here comes a beautiful baby. Someone with no sign of pregnancy until she is asked to push out a life. This is called, cryptic pregnancy. Some women might be lucky to know about theirs before labor, though not earlier than 7 or 8 months.

Unexpected mothers, whom despite their constant menstruation had no inkling of being pregnant, no baby bump, neither was there any morning sickness nor a single antenatal visit. Some might at one time though conducted a pregnancy test but turns out negative only to give birth later, are known to be cryptically pregnant.

‘A cryptic pregnancy or delayed pregnancy is a lack of subjective awareness of pregnancy until the end of gestation in pregnant women’-     Wikipedia.

Such times, pregnancy test from the urine and blood comes out negative, even ultrasounds do not reveal it. According to Science, there’s a hormone which is secreted into a woman at the onset of gestation called HCG (Human Chorionic Gonadotropin). This is the hormone that makes a home pregnancy test turn positive, but in cryptic pregnancy the HCG levels are too low to be detected in a pregnancy test, just because the fetus here grows much slowly.

A cryptic pregnancy can be caused when the woman is simply stressed out. Apparently in this case, it's in the fetus best interest for the mother to be happily oblivious to the fact that she's pregnant because sometimes, the normal stresses of a pregnancy combined with other stress in a mother's life can lead to miscarriage. But such pregnancy that uses few resources in a mother's body can actually increase the fetus chance of survival. This is the belief from some quarters.

The period-like bleeding of a woman going through cryptic pregnancy accounts for the low build up of the HCG hormones in the urine and the blood. Some of it is shed every time she bleeds and the heavier the flow, the longer the cryptic gestation period which remains unknown to her still. Cryptic pregnancies can take more than 40 weeks and have been known to last as long as two years in some women. A woman in the US once claims she's been pregnant for nearly four years, backed up with the fact that owing to the low HCG level in such women, the babies don't even get bones until they're 2-to-3 years old in the womb.

Cryptic pregnancy should make anyone skeptical about having unprotected sex especially. Many women have ignorantly carried into full term such pregnancies belonging to an ex, but for another man. In as much as true paternity could be deduced via the aid of a DNA test, promiscuous women who might have slept with too many men in the past would find it difficult pinning it to the possibility of the actual father, than those with minimal sexual partners.

           

           As expected, cryptic pregnancy can come about as a result of the following factors;

·        Women who are or had been on birth control methods such as contraceptive pills, tubal ligation (tubes tied to prevent the sperm from entering the fallopian tube) or other birth control methods like Mirena Coil,Norplant, Depo-provera, Nexplanon etc release more hormones, which affect the normal pregnancy hormones hence vulnerable to getting pregnant cryptically.

·                       A woman’s psyche, high-stress levels for instance which greatly influences her hormones can cause a cryptic pregnancy too. This is minimal though. Hormonal imbalances arising from such like hormones that have not gone back to normal after a recent pregnancy, breastfeeding, abortion or miscarriage could make a woman become pregnant immediately and might go undetected.

·                   Low body fat could trigger a hormonal imbalance as in the case of athletes especially. So such women could be cryptically pregnant too.

·                  Undetected Peri-menopause is another reason why a woman might be cryptically pregnant. This is the time when her body starts showing signs of the onset of menopause, and just because some women might start their menopause as early as in their 30s, they could become cryptically pregnant.

                

·               Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS): This is when small cysts form on the enlarged ovaries of a woman. In as much as this is neither harmful nor cancerous, they can cause hormonal imbalances in the body which in turn could be the reason why a woman’s pregnancy could remain unnoticed.

·                        Other reasons could be as a result of a woman who is placed on HCG oral drops or injections for weight loss, ingesting of the ‘morning after pill’, eating large amounts of soy products etc.

   

Don’t just be on this planet, know the possibilities of some happenings.