From NPR, this is Invisibilia. I'm Kia Miyakanatees and with me today is producer and reporter

Abby Wendell. Hi Kia. Hello. So I had this interesting conversation with a woman the other

day named Allison Kaufman and she told me about this experience she had that complicated the old saying,

you can't be a little bit pregnant. Hmm. What are you saying you can be a little bit pregnant?

So let me just like tell you what happened for Allison. Okay. It was a few years ago she and her husband

were trying to get pregnant and it took him a little while but after several months, Allison

missed her period so she tested and it was positive. Nice. Over the next few weeks, Allison says she

started to feel pregnant. Some nausea, definitely some fatigue, just overall icky but also very excited.

Eight or nine weeks in Allison and her husband they go for their first prenatal exam and the ultrasound

technician is like doing the exam, taking measurements but at some point Allison starts to realize

something is not right. The ultrasound technician was not finding the heartbeat. So they finished

up the ultrasound and and then she informed us that because of the fact that there is not

fetal cardiac activity that the pregnancy is not viable. Oh no. So the doctor told her the

pregnancy wasn't progressing but her body hadn't realized it yet so it was still acting as though

she was pregnant. Hmm. Is that unusual? What happened to her? Well it's not super common. The

doctor called it a missed abortion which is like a type of miscarriage. But miscarriages in general

are like quite common. Doctors think between one and five maybe even one and four pregnancies

end in miscarriage. Okay. And later that day Allison got a procedure called a DNC, a dilation and

curative and almost immediately she stopped feeling pregnant physically. Denosha fatigue, it can

mess all of that one away but it took her a long time she said to stop feeling pregnant emotionally

and mentally. It's hard not to inevitably be like okay I'm pregnant this day. I'm gonna give birth

on this day you know like what's my next year gonna look like you don't want to get ahead of yourself

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