Pregnancy surprises N. Stafford woman
New North Stafford mother says she did not know she was pregnant until her labor started
By JIM HALL
Date published: 3/13/2005
By JIM HALL
The questions started soon after Gennifer McCauley gave birth:
Did you feel the baby kick?
Did you have morning sickness?
How could you not know you were pregnant?
McCauley understands the skepticism. She, too, did not believe the news when she first heard it. But that fact is, she says, she did not know she was pregnant until her labor started.
McCauley gave birth to her first child, a boy, at Mary Washington Hospital on March 1. She said she first learned that she was pregnant about four hours earlier, when a hospital technician did an ultrasound test.
"You're 81/2 months pregnant," the technician told her.
McCauley figured that there must be a mistake. She had not missed a period. She was using the contraceptive patch.
"You're 81/2 months pregnant," the technician repeated.
"I lay there and cried and cried," McCauley said.
McCauley's mother, Michele Hepner, walked into the exam room to find her daughter in tears.
"What's wrong?" Hepner asked.
At first, neither daughter nor technician would answer her.
"Somebody tell me," Hepner insisted.
"I'm pregnant," McCauley finally said.
"How far along?" Hepner asked.
"I'm 81/2 months," McCauley said.
"No way in hell," Hepner said.
Actually, McCauley was about to deliver. She had started cramping and bleeding that morning while at her job as a grocery store cashier. Now she was dilated to 8 centimeters.
Benjamin Michael McCauley-Lang was born at about 2 p.m. that day. He weighed 7 pounds, 3 ounces, was 19 inches long and appears to be perfectly healthy.
Since then, McCauley, her boyfriend and their families have tried to figure out what happened. How could a healthy 22-year-old woman--a little overweight but not obese, who lives with her parents in North Stafford--carry a baby to term and not know it?
It turns out that the clues were there, though unrecognized.
McCauley said she now knows that the "flu" she had for six weeks last fall was morning sickness.
The cravings, the leg cramps, the swollen feet, the heartburn, depression, difficulty sleeping, and the "spare tire" and 20-pound weight gain--all of these, McCauley now realizes, were symptoms of pregnancy. When they were happening, she did not recognize them.
"I had no reason to think," she said.
Date published: 3/13/2005
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