Spoiler alert for anybody who hasn't seen the last season, and is still planning on it!
So I've been watching the series Charmed off and on on Netflix. I've finally made it to the last season. I just finished the episode where Phoebe finds out she's pregnant with Dex's baby. She took a test in the morning, was talking about how her "boobs feel enormous, and all she wants to do is eat all of this (Halloween) candy." Then she takes another test the next day (or later that day - sometimes the timelines are wonky) and tells her sister "I took another test. I guess the first one was wrong."
No, I'm sorry, it wasn't. She had a chemical pregnancy. Why can't they just SAY that instead of playing the false positive game, which is SOOO much less prevalent than loss? As I've stated before, some statistics put 50% of all pregnancies - whether the woman knows she is pregnant or not - ending in a miscarriage. HALF. Do you know what the odds are of a false positive pregnancy test? When a home pregnancy test is used correctly, it is 97% effective. That's right. So, barring any fertility treatments (which the character was not undergoing) or any medication that would contain HCG, there is only a 3% chance that the test was defective and showed a false positive. Seriously, writers?? Seriously??
It would have been such a great opportunity to bring loss to the spotlight and let people know it's ok, and not their fault when they go through it! But noooo, they had to just go right ahead and help sweep it back under the rug. And trying to make it sound like false positives happen on a regular basis!
Ok, random vent over. Thanks for listening! :)
I just read something yesterday that stated that before the home pregnancy test, many women never realized they'd had a miscarriage... their "period" just started and they didn't think anything of it.
ReplyDeleteSeems kind of sad to me, to never know that there was going to be a baby. :(
I agree with you, though, and I think it encompasses everything related to pregnancy... the media and movies/television spread all sorts of myths about pregnancy, labor, delivery, infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, etc. I can't watch movies like Knocked Up or shows like A Baby Story anymore without wanting to scream at the television.
Ooh I've never seen A Baby Story. Thanks for the heads up on that one. LOL Shows like I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant irritate the crap out of me too. Where's the shows on the couples that try for YEARS? Where's the shows about success after recurrent loss? We should start our own TV network. ;)
DeleteA Baby Story irritates me more because they really overdramatize the perils of labor and tend to lovingly mock the mamas who are trying for a med-free and intervention-free birth.
DeleteAs for I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant... I know ONE person who had a baby and didn't realize she was pregnant when she went into labor (my mother's cousin)... but I have MANY friends who struggle with infertility... I can't even count. Delivering after not realizing there is a pregnancy does happen... but it happens much less often than infertility. So you're right - where are the happy success stories about overcoming infertility?