‘IT HAPPENED TO ME!’
After being told by her GP that she’d had a miscarriage at eight weeks, Janine Hatem continued with life as usual: there were no normal pregnancy symptoms and her abdomen didn’t grow. That started to change at 20 weeks, which was when the mother-of-two discovered she was still pregnant with her third child. Janine, whose first child was also a “surprise” as she had carried on bleeding during the first trimester, says it’s “a load of nonsense” that it’s impossible to not know you’re pregnant beyond the first trimester. “It’s so easy to brush it off as a bug, or something else.” Lesley Reynolds kept complaining of a sore stomach, but never suspected she was pregnant, because she didn’t have morning sickness or sore breasts, and she had always had irregular periods: “So when I missed a month or two, I didn’t really get worried.” Plus, she didn’t put on any weight and stayed at a slight 50kg until much later into her pregnancy. It also didn’t help that the first doctor she saw told her she probably had a stomach ulcer! When the pain persisted, she sought a second opinion and it was only then that she was advised to do a test and discovered she was 18 weeks pregnant.