Cryptic pregnancy: how 18-year-old carried pregnancy for 7 months unknowingly
By Viola Kosome, May 22, 2026Imagine carrying a pregnancy for nine months and having no clue about it. What is more puzzling is experiencing monthly periods normally and not showing any subtle signs of pregnancy until it is time to deliver. Sounds unreal and jigsaw puzzling.
But this is the reality several women are facing after unknowingly conceiving and continuing with their lives normally until the signs of labour pains begin to show.
While rare, cryptic pregnancy, a condition where a pregnant woman carries a pregnancy without knowing and only learns about it in the last trimester or during labour, is a reality for some women.
The situation has forced unprepared families to improvise to take care of their surprise bundles of joy. In contrast, others remain with answered questions of how they carried a pregnancy for nine months without noticing, even once, that they were pregnant.
For some women, the situation is even worse when their husbands reject the newborns on grounds that they had deliberately hid the pregnancy from them, further worsening emotional trauma for some.
Wangeci’s experience
But not all experiences are the same. For Joleen Wangeci, giving birth unexpectedly at just 18 years old was not the surprise package she had ever imagined. She was still a teenager and had just completed her high school and was unprepared to be a mother just yet.
For seven months, she had been carrying a baby inside her but did not have even the tiniest clue she was pregnant. There were no signs. No loss of appetite, almost no change to her physical looks, and she would have laughed at anyone who would claim she was pregnant.
For her, what had started as a simple painful cramp that forced her to seek a medical checkup turned up to be what she had least expected. She was pregnant and already in the last phase of her pregnancy.
“Picture this. One Wednesday morning and I am washing the utensils, and suddenly I think my period cramps have started, but this time they are more painful than they normally are, and so I call my mother and tell her this time round my periods are painful; I need to see a doctor,” she explains.
While at the OB-GYN office, she was shocked when the doctor insisted on testing her for pregnancy and insisted that she is pregnant and in labour. They tested her and found she was expectant.
“It was shocking. I was not only pregnant, but I was also already due for delivery,” narrates Wangeci.
She, however, admits that there were some signs but did not take them seriously because she did not suspect she was pregnant and had been experiencing her periods normally.
She gave birth at 7 months, and the baby was 1 kg but later succumbed due to being premature.
“Normally women are taught that once you don’t get your period, that is when you test for pregnancy, but for me this was different. I had my periods and no belly for six months. My tummy was flat,” she says.
At the hospital, she said that the doctors did not explain to her what exactly was going on with her or what a cryptic pregnancy was and only learnt about it after her ordeal.
Wangeci’s motherhood journey
Today, Wangeci is a mother of three adorable children, and all her pregnancies were normal, but her experience with cryptic pregnancy is still clear in her memory.
She says her parents were so disappointed with her and thought that she lied; she didn’t know she was pregnant.
She noted that she experienced challenges after giving birth, including shame.
“I remember staying in my room for a whole month as I was taking medicine to stop the milk since the baby didn’t survive because he was premature. The shame, mainly because I was straight out of high school and things just didn’t turn out the way I had imagined, and everyone just dismissed me anytime I would say I didn’t know I was pregnant.” She said.
Now, she says the baby could have been 9 years old.
She advises women to normalise taking a pregnancy test once in a while and informs them that experiencing their periods does not mean they are not pregnant.
Her experience mirrors that of Alice Ochieng, a 22-year-old mother who also learnt she was pregnant when her pregnancy had clocked seven months.
During the seven months, she noted she used to have weird food cravings, nausea, dizziness and fatigue, and irregular menses but assumed it was just a normal occurrence that would disappear.
“I experienced my monthly periods normally and always thought it was normal, so there was little to worry about,” she narrates.
But her fate would change when she opted to visit a facility for a checkup of the frequent fatigue she used to experience.
“I was shocked and in denial when results came that I was expecting. I was lost beyond words and did not know how to share the information with my parents and my partner. I even attempted to commit suicide, but I survived,” says Alice.
Her parents, however, took her through counselling, and she started attending prenatal clinics.
A doctor who examined her said that her cryptic pregnancy was brought by hormonal imbalance. Her daughter will be turning three years old in October this year.
Understanding cryptic pregnancy
According to Dr Paul Ogola, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist who is also a specialist in minimally invasive surgery practising in Kisumu, he says cryptic pregnancy is also called ‘stealth pregnancy’ and occurs when a woman doesn’t know that she is pregnant.
According to him, most of the time, it is recognised late during the pregnancy, either in the third trimester and sometimes even during labour.
He reveals to us that it is a very rare phenomenon, especially in the African societies.
“It really manifests very late around the third trimester from around 32 weeks or during labour,” he said.
The medic contends that the risk factors of cryptic pregnancy are when there are hormonal issues that might occur when one has an irregular cycle, making them unaware that they are pregnant. He adds that while in pregnancy, there are some light bleedings that some people might assume are menstrual periods.
Another risk factor, he says, is when some expectant mothers do not have symptoms that usually accompany pregnancy, like morning sickness, change in weight gain, vomiting and even the growth of the baby.
“There are also psychosocial factors and issues that can force someone to believe that they are pregnant, which includes battling issues of infertility for a long time then you become pregnant, and because of the stress of following up and wanting to get a baby, you get pregnant, and you will not believe it and continue carrying the pregnancy unless somebody tells you,” he said.
He also contends that patients who are on contraception and family planning might get pregnant.
“At this point, you will find someone on family planning gets pregnant and assume that they are on family planning and cannot get pregnant. ” he said.
According to him, cryptic pregnancy affects the baby since the mother does not attend antenatal care despite procedures being conducted to ensure that the baby is safe, and during delivery, everything is fine.
“The baby might come out having health issues and conditions like anaemia, infections that might later be transmitted to the baby with issues like HIV, syphilis, and hepatitis,” he said.
He also noted that the mother also will miss supplements during pregnancy and, most importantly, folate, which is important during the development.
“Folate is important during the development of the spinal cord and actually one of the most important in building DNA, and if they are having insufficiency in the micronutrient, it might cause congenital abnormalities,” he said.
He noted that antinatal clinics are important and encouraged mothers to attend at least 8 visits during their pregnancy journey and said mothers should go to the hospital immediately from the time they realise that they are pregnant.
“Our African society is to wait until the pregnancy appears big, and by the time they are coming, they are around 20 weeks, having missed a lot. I encourage mothers to come to the clinics,” he said.
He noted that women experience emotional challenges and shock when they realise that they are pregnant during labour, which might leave them traumatised, especially when they are teenagers.
He said that women approaching their menopause, who are approaching their 50s, get pregnant, with their periods being irregular; they might not believe when they get pregnant.
He urged the public health systems to increase awareness of cryptic pregnancy despite having limited resources.
Despite it being rare, he states that cryptic pregnancy is a relatively small concern compared to other more serious health issues that require greater attention within the healthcare system, including maternal deaths, cancer, HIV, perinatal deaths, and malnutrition, among others, which he says should be prioritised first.
“It will be good to mention it, but I really don’t think it is a big health concern but just something that is a bit rare.
He revealed that the range of cryptic pregnancies is one in 500 to one in 2000.
He encouraged women to go for a regular health check-up annually and advised women to visit a doctor when they experience pregnancy symptoms.
He also advised women to embrace family planning as well and called on the government to include teenagers when talking about contraception.
A 2019 study by the World Health Organization found unintended pregnancies have high risks for a mother and the child and carry health risks such as malnutrition, illness, abuse and neglect but can also result into death. The study attributes it to women who stop using contraceptives and underestimate the likelihood of conception.