The denial of pregnancy It is a psychological process that can be surprising, but it affects many more women than we can think throughout the year. Denial of pregnancy is called the situation in which the woman is not aware of being pregnant and remains ignorant of it.
The French Association for the recognition of the Denial of Pregnancy estimates that in France there are possible 2000 cases a year and of them about 300 women will arrive at childbirth without having been aware of the pregnancy at any time. Doctors, therapists and affected people request through it that it be recognized as a pathology and a public health problem and that women who suffer from it, can harm the baby, can be imprisoned because they affirm that they are not responsible for their acts
In most cases the woman ends up realizing the obvious or, and seems to be quite habitual, she does so when she goes to the doctor worried about nonspecific abdominal discomfort and weight gain. These cases usually evolve very well and women recognize their pregnancy after this.
We may think that this only happens to very young girls or to those who already had a mental disorder or retardation. But it is not true. It turns out that half of the women who suffer from it had previously had children, and it is also a problem that is not related to cases of social exclusion or marginalization, but can occur in all social, economic and all levels educationally distributed. I was surprised to read that they suffer from it in addition to adolescents or women in situations of social exclusion, and others in better situations: military, secretaries, lawyers, teachers, mothers of several children with normal lives.
I add that the environment, friends, family and partners often remain ignorant of pregnancy and, a posteriori, say they have not noticed anything strange. Even the couples they live with don't realize it.
And it is usual in these cases of denial of pregnancy that, the body, ignorant of its state, does not change as in the rest of the pregnant women. The baby is placed along and the belly barely protrudes. There is no nausea or dizziness, and if they occur, the woman discards them as a product of a mild problem. The baby does not move much or, when she does, the woman thinks they are gases. Some even continue to have the rule.
In those cases the danger is evident. The later the understanding of the staff happens, the trauma will be. Although even when the baby is born in most women, a reconciliation with what happened is possible and they can raise their child, there are usually risks if the child arrives without knowing anything.
When denial is total and he arrives at the point of presenting the birth there will be great anguish to realize that he did not recognize the signs of his body and did not take care of the fetus properly. The mother continues in some cases without being able to realize that the pains she suffers are from childbirth and what happens until the baby is born. The trauma is huge and then it can increase your disconnection with reality. Most of them manage to recover and become linked to their child, especially if the delivery happens in good circumstances and accompanied or in a medical center to which they are transferred.
But there are some cases in which the mother, and that makes her especially vulnerable, gives birth alone and fails to recognize that she is giving birth. The child is born and does not know that he is a child, he completely loses the understanding of reality. In some cases the baby dies from lack of care, from abandonment or from the same hand of the upset mother.
Creepy stories of women who accumulate dead babies in their garden or in the freezer are also documented, but, contrary to what we would think, they do not do so to avoid their responsibility, but because of a mental disorder that makes them not know exactly what happens but wishing to keep the bodies close.
All this fills us with amazement when the case is resolved well and with real horror when the children end up dying. We will often have thought that these women were monsters, but I assure you that by reading the testimonies of those people on the page of the French Association for the recognition of the Denial of Pregnancy, I have been overwhelmed by how they explain the traumatic experiences and their total disconnection with reality at that time and also excited with the happy stories of women who were able to meet their body and take care of their babies normally.
