"I Didn't Know I was Pregnant!"

Sadly, one of the harsh realities we faced during our recent family vacation to beautiful Wrightsville Beach was living without our TiVo.

It was during the down time, taking a break from the sun-n-surf, that we experienced life as we once knew it. Gone was our limitless supply of “Mythbusters” and “Seinfeld” reruns. Instead, we were forced to watch regularly scheduled programming -- at its regularly scheduled time. We watched the All-Star Game live, without fast-forwarding or back-8-ing anything. (At one point Amelia asked Dave who Albert “Poo-holes” was.) Did you know a baseball game can last FOUR HOURS?

However, there are other things that absolutely should NOT last four hours, according to the Cialis ads we were forced to watch between every inning.

We learned that people are tuning in with enough regularity to keep shows like “18 and Counting” (about a woman who, in my opinion, could stand to give her vagina a break for a while) on the air.

But it was the show “I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant” that really grabbed our attention.

In IDKIWP, women spend half an hour recounting the time they thought they had gas, only to fart out a 7-pound, 7-ounce surprise.

Having given birth four times myself, I could not imagine nine months of expanding waistline, swollen ankles, and an unquenchable craving for Mexican food without questioning the cause. And passing a baby is NOTHING like passing---

“I wonder if my patient will be on,” Dave casually tossed out from behind his iPhone in the living room of our condo-by-the-beach, breaking my train of thought.

Ah yes, that poor woman…

Within the last 15 years, in one of the four places he has trained and/or practiced medicine, a woman came into Dave’s office complaining of gas pain, weight gain, and constipation. She feared a tumor.

Obviously, he asked if she might be pregnant.

“No, absolutely not,” she told him. “I’ve taken three tests in the last couple of months, and they all came back negative. And my periods are pretty regular,” she added.

To be fair to her, she was a bit overweight and would not have noticed a protruding belly as much as Nicole Richie probably did. To be fair to Dave, she was a bit overweight and had just assured him she was not pregnant.

Dr. Dave asked her lie down for her exam. He listened to her abdomen through his stethoscope and heard some rather odd sounds. He pressed around her large intestine and did, indeed, feel a mass he felt should be x-rayed.

While she sat in the exam room waiting for the results of her x-ray, nervous about her potential tumor, Dave stood outside her door, looking at the x-ray film that clearly showed a growth, but not the kind he was expecting. This one looked to be about 6-7 pounds, something she had likely had for 8-8 ½ months, with legs and arms, and a head engaged in her pelvis.

Yep, the tumor was a baby.

“How did you tell her?” I recall asking Dave that night at dinner.

“I told her that the good news was she did not have a tumor,” he said, “and that the condition was temporary.”

He had explained to her that the x-ray showed she was pregnant, pretty far along, and that she was welcome to sit in the exam room to collect herself for as long as she needed.

“Is she still sitting there?” I had asked as we cleared the dinner table.

“No, we got her an appointment with an OB. She should deliver within a few weeks. Maybe two.”

And now this story, and countless others that cannot possibly vary a whole lot, are available for viewing on Discovery Health.

Which gives me hope that one day, someone will pick up my idea for a reality show involving regular women in a room with a hot pan of brownies, a selection of designer swimsuits, Megan Fox, and duct tape.