Why some women experience cryptic pregnancy

-Reasons they have ‘hidden pregnancy’ or pregnancy without symptoms   Some women carry pregnancy to term still experiencing their monthly period, and without their stomachs increasing in size or having other symptoms of pregnancy. There are cases of women who complained of stomach ache and went to the hospital only for the doctor to tell […]

-Reasons they have ‘hidden pregnancy’ or pregnancy without symptoms

 

Some women carry pregnancy to term still experiencing their monthly period, and without their stomachs increasing in size or having other symptoms of pregnancy.

There are cases of women who complained of stomach ache and went to the hospital only for the doctor to tell them it was labour pains. This often leaves relatives and other people around them in shock at the birth of their babies.

Recently, the Intelligence and International Cooperation (IICU) organisation and the Embassy of Sweden in Nigeria handed a 43-year-old Nigerian based in Sweden, Stephany Isaksson Bassey, to the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP) on the suspicion that the child she came with to the embassy was not her biological child.

She had gone to the embassy to procure travel documents for a two month-old baby boy whom she claimed she delivered through cryptic pregnancy.

There are instances where the woman’s body actually shows very unrecognisable pregnancy symptoms so that she is totally unaware of what is happening with her regular menstrual flow. This is attributed to hormonal imbalance wherein there is a constant shedding of some parts of the uterine lining causing it to bleed each month.

A consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist with Kuje General Hospital, Dr Ngonadi Nnamdi, explained that a pregnancy is said to be cryptic when it goes undetected for a long period of time, or sometimes till the delivery date due to minimal or no symptoms that occur with regular pregnancy.

He said, it is a form of abnormal pregnancy whereby the  woman is not aware that she is pregnant up till gestational age of 20 weeks or even to the point of delivery that presents in labour.

“It connotes that there is little or low production of pregnancy hormones which is known as Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG). It is either not produced or it is in insufficient quantity thereby making pregnancy test negative through urine or blood tests.

“It means that the pregnancy cannot be diagnosed easily and the urine and blood tests often appear negative. Occasionally ultra sound cannot detect it because it grows slowly. ”

Dr Nnamdi described such pregnancies as abnormal, adding that the foetus develops slowly and may be delivered late. He added, however, that there is not enough medical literature supporting this type of pregnancy.

He stated that some of the causes include; hormonal imbalance on the part of the mother, for example polycystic ovarian syndrome,  perimenopause when the body shows various signs of the oncoming phase of menopause, becoming pregnant immediately after the delivery of a baby, and women who are  on oral contraceptives or hormonal contraceptives which hinder the maternal blood making the hormones not  to be produced in adequate quantities.

The gynecologist,  who said it is not a common incidence because it appears 1 in 500 pregnancies, added that because of the nature of the pregnancy, fraudsters can easily capitalise on it to claim they are pregnant or the baby they delivered was through cryptic pregnancy.

He said the best way to establish that a woman has a cryptic pregnancy is when she presents herself in labour or when a DNA examination is carried out on the baby to know whether she is actually the biological mother.

“It is not enough for a woman to just claim she has cryptic pregnancy. If you don’t see a woman in labour, there is no how you can detect she is the biological mother of the baby except through DNA test. If the doctors and nurses that took the delivery cannot be found, it will be discovered through DNA test. For a pregnancy not to be diagnosed does not mean it is not real but medical examination must be conducted to ascertain the claim,” he said.

Dr Nnamdi also explained that babies delivered through this pregnancy are born normal even though their development in the womb was slow.

He said there were also complications with cryptic pregnancy because the pregnant woman was not aware of her status.

“Firstly, she does not have adequate ante-natal care, complications of pregnancy such as diabetes, high blood pressure and other issues associated with pregnancy may not be detected. This might pose high risk to the woman and the baby.

“Moreover, since the prominent signs of pregnancy are mostly missing, complications like blood group incompatibility, diabetes, hypertension, among others, cannot be detected via pre-natal tests and may risk both lives,” said Dr Nnamdi.

He advised women who may notice one symptom of pregnancy or the other, no matter how mild to always seek medical attention so that whatever it is might be would be detected on time and attended to.