What is cryptic pregnancy?

Cryptic pregnancy is any pregnancy diagnosed after 20 weeks, well into a woman's second trimester. OB/GYN specialist Jessica Shepherd, MD, explains how a woman may miss the classic pregnancy symptoms and not know that she's expecting.

Transcript

00:00

[MUSIC PLAYING] Cryptic delivery is different than cryptic pregnancy because a cryptic delivery is when a patient shows up to the hospital and doesn't know they're pregnant and delivers

00:07

right at that point.

00:15

When we think of cryptic pregnancy, cryptic pregnancy is any pregnancy that is diagnosed after 20 weeks.

00:22

So when we think about a normal pregnancy, it's typically 40 weeks. So any pregnancy that's diagnosed after 20 weeks

00:28

is considered a cryptic pregnancy, which actually is more common than one would think because it happens to 1 in 475 women.

00:37

Cryptic delivery is different than cryptic pregnancy because a cryptic delivery is when a patient shows up to the hospital and doesn't know they're pregnant and delivers

00:45

right at that point, whereas a cryptic pregnancy, again, is diagnosed after 20 weeks. The numbers for cryptic pregnancy is 1 in 1,600.

00:54

Causes of cryptic pregnancy-- there are actually no causes of cryptic pregnancy. It's just undiagnosed until later in the pregnancy.

01:01

But the reason why women may not know that they're pregnant is very high stressful time in their life where it suppresses a lot of the classical pregnancy

01:09

symptoms that you might have, such as morning sickness and, again, full breasts, full, tender breasts. They may not experience that and attribute it

01:17

to something else going on in their life. A lot of patients who are very, very high athletes and have low fat, low body fat,

01:25

may have differences in their cycles. And so if they bleed during the first portion of their pregnancy and not know, then again,

01:33

that may be a cause of someone not knowing that they're pregnant. Also, women who are obese may not notice the change in their body habitus or their body form.

01:41

And again, when they have increase in the abdominal girth, they may not notice specifically that it may be due to a pregnancy,

01:48

because it's not isolated. [AUDIO LOGO]