‘I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant’: Yes indeed, having sex can make babies!

I think I’m pretty lucky because I finished grade school long before George W. Bush became president, so I  got to benefit from sex education without the abstinence only rhetoric.  Not only did I learn where babies come from, but I also got to learn about some neat ways to prevent having those little bundles of shit and joy. Having read the warnings on boxes of condoms and the birth control pill inserts I know that neither one is 100 percent effective.  I like to think that I’d be much more vigilant than the women featured in TLC’s I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant.

TLC (The Learning Channel to the uninitiated) and their sister network, Discovery Health have been my greatest source of entertainment  since finishing school and being unemployed.  TLC truly lives up to its name because I have learned a great many things like little people can do anything and everything (Little People Big World);  that Kleinfeld’s is the only place to get a wedding dress (Say Yes to the Dress);  that fundamentalist Christians have lots of kids (18 Kids and Counting); and that Jon and Kate hate each other.  Clearly, TLC is a channel for heterosexual women interested in little people, buying the princess-for-a-day wedding dress, and having lots of babies because I can’t imagine a straight guy spending five minutes watching this channel.  I know this because I did a highly unscientific survey of one guy–my boyfriend–and the results suggest that he thinks TLC is mind numbingly stupid.  I would  like to be a fly on the wall during TLC’s programming and marketing meetings.

But this whole thing with women unaware of their pregnancies leaves me in total consternation.  I like to think of myself as pretty open-minded, believing that anything can happen and I suppose it is possible to never experience any of  the usual holy-shit- I’m- pregnant symptoms.  I understand there are women who have medical conditions that preclude getting their periods so they wouldn’t think anything was out of the ordinary.  However, I can’t stop thinking about the fact that most of the women featured on this show are adults–adults who are quite aware that they are sexually active.  There is no suggestion of immaculate conception for any of them.  I’m not saying I am better than any of these women, but really, I know that having sex can lead to pregnancy.  My advice to sexually active women every where:  Pay attention to your bodies and consider the fact that you could get pregnant.  Sheesh.

I’ve read similar articles about women unaware of their pregnancies until little junior was making his appearance over the toilet and many of these women contend that they weren’t in denial and that they never had any of the tell-tale signs.  I’m sure it would suck mightily if this happened to me, but I’m not convinced they were anything more than misinformed, in some combination of deep denial and scared shitless to let their boyfriends/husbands/strict Catholic families know they were pregnant.   Some of the women reported thinking they were having really bad gas and constipation.   If I ever have gas so bad that I can see a little foot outline in my abdomen, you can bet I’m gonna think something’s not right.