I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant – Not Quite Primetime

Show: I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant
Channel and Time: TLC, 10:30 A.M.
Episode Title:  “Freshman 15″
Original air date: 5/20/09

“How can a woman not know she’s pregnant? How can a full-term pregnancy go unnoticed?”

These are just two of the many questions that the rather ridiculous, but still addicting show I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant (Discovery Health/TLC) attempts to answer.

I’ve seen this show a number of times before; in fact, I watched almost obsessively when I was pregnant. I had all the classic symptoms almost immediately: nausea, fatigue, cravings, headaches … and oh yeah, a growing stomach and a human being pummeling away at my insides. I’d watch the show, scarfing down Cheez-its and spoonfuls of peanut butter and think, “Is this for real? How it is even possible for someone to not know she’s pregnant?” The BabyCenter website of which I was a member exploded with posts about I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant over the summer, when they were playing some sort of marathon on TLC. Low and behold, there’s always someone on those message boards “who knows someone” who really had no clue.

The show’s format is that of a dramatic re-enactment (and I mean dramatic – complete with Biggest Loser-esque orchestral “tension” music) of two women’s stories per half-hour episode. The narration summarizes the unique circumstances that led to each mother’s ignorance of her own pregnancy. This includes attributing any symptoms she might experience to another cause. For example, a woman might blame her weight gain on the fact that she stopped exercising when she suddenly got really busy. On today’s episode, a college student named Erin blamed it on “the Freshman 15″  (uh, make that the Freshman 70. Yikes!). Extreme fatigue might be attributed to the stress of a new job. Some women have claimed that, although they carried large with other children they’ve had, this particular pregnancy was an oddity in that they hardly showed at all and that nobody even noticed that they had put on a little weight.

Many of the women featured on the show are said to have had problems conceiving — such as Toni from today’s episode, who was told by doctors that she couldn’t have a child due to a history of rupturing ovarian cysts. Therefore, they aren’t really expecting to get pregnant and neglect to take birth control. Some women are even seen taking multiple pregnancy tests on the show just to confirm that they weren’t pregnant. Oddly enough, they usually come out negative. (Maybe they were taken too early?)

But still, no kicking or movement from the baby? That seems too unlikely. For the last three months of my pregnancy, my baby rolled around so much that not only was the movement visible from the outside, but it hurt like a bitch!

The thing that really gets me crazy about this show is that every woman who suddenly ends up in active labor at the hospital (or giving birth in a bathroom stall, on a boat, or in the woods) has this moment of “Oh crap! I had no prenatal care, I drank like a fish, and I ate cold cuts during my pregnancy! What’s going to happen to the baby?” And then the narrator always says something to the effect of, “Amazingly, the full-term baby is discovered to be in perfect health!” This always makes me cringe thinking that some teenager is watching this going, “Oh, cool! I can drink and smoke when I’m pregnant and nothing’s gonna happen to my baby!”

One more really superficial note about this show: the actors and actresses portraying the women and their families are always about ten times more attractive than the people in real life! Mean, I know … but they sometimes don’t even resemble the real people.

Anyway. If you’re pregnant and want a laugh, or if you want to get paranoid that you might be pregnant and don’t know it, check out TLC’s schedule to catch the next showing of I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant.

Clacked by Rachel Blum-Jose
on Jun 02, 2011 @ 15:30 EST5EDT