Extreme False Pregnancies- "I'm Three Years Pregnant With An Invisible Baby"

I know firsthand how heartbreaking false pregnancies are. After a loss in 2013, I continued having symptoms for three months afterward—amenorrhea, colostrum, nausea, weight gain, and even faint positive pregnancy tests. It wasn’t until a blood test found that the HCG levels were non-viable that my brain and body finally accepted that it was over, and the symptoms disappeared. False pregnancy feels real. I understand how jarring it is when your brain tells you that there is no baby, but your heart and body insist that there is.



So, when I saw a couple in a parenting group on Facebook saying that they were “certain” they were pregnant even though their tests were negative, I warmly explained that false pregnancy isn’t uncommon and that I wished them better luck next time. Then I heard them make some claims that were so outlandish that I prayed they were joking.


You see, they were “certain” that she was not just a little bit pregnant—they said she was full-term, and in early labor. They also said that they had never had a single positive pregnancy test and that all of the ultrasounds showed that her uterus was empty. They said that the mom-to-be had been having periods every 30-45 days. They said that the doctors and midwives they saw were “denying” the reality of their pregnancy. They posted photos of empty ultrasounds and negative pregnancy tests, swearing that they could see a full-term baby and a positive line on the tests. And here’s the kicker: they said that the baby was a miracle, since the father does not have testicles and can not possibly produce sperm.

This couple was deep in the throes of not just a false pregnancy, but a profound and disturbing psychotic delusion. The worst part is that they weren’t alone. I found an entire culture of medicine-denying, science-denying women and couples—all of them anticipating unassisted home births, since doctors are not to be trusted—who believe that they are experiencing pregnancies that are full-term and beyond, even though they have few or no signs of pregnancy and doctors tell them they are not pregnant. They call these “cryptic” pregnancies, which in mainstream medical language refers to pregnancies that the mother is unaware of. In this strange subculture's language, it means a pregnancy with absolutely no signs or symptoms except the mother’s psychic knowledge.



Self-proclaimed cryptic pregnancy expert Anne R. Wicks states that, “Many of the women experiencing cryptic or stealth pregnancies are highly aware, intuitive or psychic,” and says that actual false pregnancies are extremely rare and only “occasionally” psychological in origin, and that when they happen, it’s the body’s way of protecting against an abusive husband. Ms. Wicks insists that most people with pregnancy symptoms and no visible baby are actually pregnant with these magical “cryptic” fetuses. When they’re not born after weeks, months, years? Well, Wicks says, you can be pregnant with a cryptic baby for up to five years. Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not pregnant just because you’ve been “pregnant” for years without peeing positive.



Wicks’ ideas about magical five-year gestations are far from uncommon, which is frightening. The Gilmour Foundation, which is run by another self-appointed expert in cryptic pregnancies, states that these hidden babies always take years to gestate: “You will be pregnant with a cryptic baby longer than 40 weeks. None of these babies have been born before 17 months and some have gone as long as three or four years.” And labor from a cryptic pregnancy, she says, “lasts for months” and is extremely painful, but you shouldn’t go to the hospital because those evil doctors and their evil science will tell you that it’s not real and will refer you for psychiatric treatment.


 With this kind of advice, it’s not surprising that cryptic pregnancy support groups are filled with women talking about being years into pregnancies that their doctors are denying the existence of. In one Facebook support group, which openly supports freebirth and condemns the “birth industry” and the use of, y’know, professional doctors and midwives, women share their stories and photos of their “baby bumps” that look suspiciously like good old-fashioned obesity.



 One woman in the group says that she is 85 weeks pregnant.

 Another says that she has been pregnant twenty times with babies that doctors could find no trace of.

The consensus seems to be that gaining weight or worsening posture are foolproof signs of pregnancy, even when the woman has been “pregnant” for a year and a half.

The Gilmour Foundation warns these women that they’re in for a world of stress and mistreatment if they seek medical attention:


“You will be told that the fetal movement you feel is gas, IBS, your bowels moving, your abs moving, worms, a parasite, cysts, fibroids, constipation, muscle spasms, the list goes on.


You will be diagnosed with IBS, gallbladder issues (they may even try to take it out), celiac disease, cysts, fibroids, UTIs (urinary tract infection),  a systemic infection, PCOS (poly cystic ovarian syndrome),  pre-mature menopause,  menopause, peri-menopause, thyroid issues, and of coarse the famous “phantom pregnancy” this list goes on as well. They may even try to take out your ovaries and give you a total hysterectomy. 



 If you continue to push the issue with the same doctor or hospital, they will try to intervene and make you seek help from mental health professionals.  Women have been given “Interventions” by their Obstetricians and a Psychiatrists. 


 If you show them how your belly is growing, they will tell you that you are just fat and you need to stop eating gluten and sugar. 


 It will make no difference how you look or what you say, they will not believe you or help you as long as your blood tests are negative.  


 The people you know will not believe you and if they do, when you go over 42 weeks without delivering, they will stop. You have to be VERY careful about who you tell and how many people you tell. No one believes a pregnancy can go so long.



You will have to plan on delivering at home with out help. You can go to the ER when you do go into labor, but if you are not dilated enough to where they can see your baby in your cervix, they will do a pregnancy test, tell you that you are not pregnant, and send you home. This has happened often and this is why you MUST have a back up home birthing plan. You may not want to deliver at home, but you may not be given a choice.  DO NOT put yourself in a situation where you are turned away from the hospital and you have no information on unassisted delivery.  You MUST have a back up home birth plan. Please educate yourself as much as possible on unassisted delivery and home birth."

(Un)fortunately for these medical conspiracy theorists, there’s plenty of support to be found through the many informative mommybloggers who have shared their stories.


Crypticpregnancy.com collects the stories of the many women who are going through this, so they all know that they are not alone. Conspicuously absent from these collections are stories that end in births. 

So what happens when these women, years into their invisible pregnancies, don’t give birth? Well, that’s where my research turned from worrisome to deeply disturbing.

A  few women who believe in these magical invisible fetuses eventually realize that they were wrong and that there is no baby. The “pregnancy” blog of Becky Done, who was highly involved in the community and referenced often as a “real” cryptic pregnancy, eventually realized after a detailed abdominal CT Scan that she was suffering from a false pregnancy. She concluded her blog “amipregnantornot” with a heartbreaking, brave, and honest post that ends with a message for other women in her situation:


 “If you do find out that it is a false pregnancy, please know that we can recover from this. I have always relied on my logic and reason to guide me through life and even though my confidence is at an all time low and my grief is off the charts, my logic and reason tell me that help is available if I apply myself and that I will find love again if I prepare myself. With that in mind, I will sign off for now. I will write and update with anything significant, but I am going to focus on healing and moving forward with my life. I hope I have been some assistance to those of you going through this experience.”


Becky says that she is pursuing counseling and realizes that she still has a lot of life left, and although the grief is hard, she has accepted that her baby never existed. But many women’s stories don’t end so well. Theresa Porter, a clinical social worker, found at least 21 cases in the last 25 years of women in the U.S. who, in the throes of extreme false pregnancies, murdered moms-to-be in order to steal their unborn babies.


In the most famous case, Lisa M. Montgomery, a woman who was suffering from an “extreme pseudocyesis delusion” according to a neuropsychologist who treated her, strangled a pregnant mother and cut a premature baby from her womb. She is now on death row.


 Dozens of high-profile kidnap cases have involved women breaking into homes and even sneaking into hospitals in order to steal newborns from their mothers. Also often identified as part of “pregnancy fraud” on part of the mother, in many cases, such as that of Rayshaun parson, the kidnappers are sometimes themselves suffering under the delusion that they are pregnant, and seem to be to some degree unaware of their actions.



There’s a point to me bringing this disturbing trend to light. It’s not just to share something I stumbled upon in that weird part of the internet—it’s also to give an example of just how detached from reality people can become, particularly when encouraging each other in forums on the internet.

The web has become a breeding-ground for pockets of people who encourage each other’s shared delusions. I myself nearly got pulled into one of these pools when I first became a mother and believed the culture of “online mom friends” who told me, and each other, that vaccines caused autism, that fluoride was deadly, and that pediatricians are out to get rich by making kids sick. I denied science and evidence in favor of herd mentality and comforting lies. In that way, I’m not so different from the mothers who convince each other that they are five years into invisible pregnancies. I figured out my mistake. I hope that the rest of these women figure out theirs, before they or someone else become irreparably harmed.