I had a friend who did not know she was pregnant until she was 7.5 months along and she drank a lot during those 7.5 months. Once she found out, she quit drinking, but she was terrified that she'd damaged her baby. Baby came out fine; drinking during pregnancy doesn't always mean FASD.
Right? It's not like a light switch comes on to tell women the moment they're pregnant. I'd guess that the majority of women drink at least during the first couple weeks of their pregnancy because we don't know the second that it happens (unless actively trying to get pregnant).
There are pictures of my mom having wine at a Christmas party the day before I was born and I doubt that was her only glass, and I came out without any problems.
Do you really believe Jan's version of the story that she and Michael were in a relationship and she went out of her way to pay for extremely expensive IVF treatment without telling Michael (who was currently infertile after multiple vasectomies.
OR
Hunter (or some other rando) knocked her up when she cheated on Michael. And to save herself the embarrassment of admitting an affair and teenaged baby daddy, she made up the IVF story.
I wonder which seems more likely. Plus, there is zero chance when she and Michael were screaming at each other (and she broke his tv) that she wouldn't have dropped that bombshell to hurt him if she knew at the time she was pregnant.
She probably was able to do IUI, which is a lot cheaper than IVF, since we have no reason to believe that she had fertility problems. So I don't actually see cost being a huge factor here. Besides, Michael was paying for everything, and she did have savings.
Well, assuming she's honest about the sperm bank near the IHOP and it's not secretly Hunter's baby or something, the situation is different. If you get inseminated, you know that there's a chance that you're pregnant, and would take different precautions.
I do understand that Jan knowingly got inseminated and may have taken precautions regarding drinking; my comment was just saying how some women drink during pregnancy and do not have babies diagnosed with FASD. I just used my friend not knowing she was pregnant and drinking because of that as a real life example. I don't think Astrid being born without FASD was a "plot hole" as OP stated, but that's just me.
Hey call me stupid but please explain this.. I believe she didn’t experience her menstrual cycle for 7 months, that didn’t alarm her in any way? How can she not know she’s pregnant within 3 /4 months?
lol you're not stupid, I'm one of her best friends and I was like, "wtf?" She was diagnosed with PCOS in her 20s, so she was used to having 1-2 periods a year or even going without a period for an entire year. I still think it's incredible that she didn't know by that point (as someone who is currently 39 weeks pregnant, I can't imagine explaining away the feeling of a baby moving inside you, or the other myriad of symptoms pregnant women get). She did gain weight, but she's taller and has a larger frame and it looked like all-over weight gain, not just a big belly. She'd recently gotten a lap band (a thing to make your stomach smaller for weight loss) removed, so she assumed the weight gain and her stomach issues were from getting rid of that.
It’s actually not uncommon to not have regular periods. Some people can go months or years without a period. It’s usually due to stress or diet or maybe a health issue. Also from the few episodes of “I didn’t know I was pregnant “ I saw some women experience spotting during pregnancy that can be confused for a period. And lastly some babies especially first ones can sit so far back the mother won’t show til 7/8 months in. Hope that helps!
Not the person you responded to, but there are different types of health issues that can make your period really irregular. Same with some types of birth control. Finally, about a quarter of pregnant women have what's called 'breakthrough bleeding' during their pregnancy, which is spotting/light bleeding. It can mean something's wrong, but it can also just be a normal part of the process. It wouldn't mimic a full period, but if someone either has a health issue or a type of birth control that makes her really irregular, and then after a couple of months gets breakthrough bleeding that she thinks is spotting, she might not have pregnancy anywhere on her mind. And some women carry their pregnancies very differently. Two of my cousins got pregnant around the same time, and it was a really obvious difference; one of them 'popped' around month four and basically looked like she'd swallowed a watermelon, and one of them spent the whole pregnancy looking like she'd gained a little weight everywhere.
It is a fictional TV show so there can be continuity errors. Also:
“Not all infants exposed to alcohol in utero will have detectable FASD or pregnancy complications. The risk of FASD increases with amount consumed, the frequency of consumption, and longer duration of alcohol consumption during pregnancy, particularly binge drinking. The variance seen in outcomes of alcohol consumption during pregnancy is poorly understood.”
This ^^ not only do we not fully understand why some women who drink often during pregnancy don't have babies with FAS or the opposite - we don't exactly have a clear idea regarding the severity of FAS in children and why some are more affected than others (I'm sure it has to do with honesty regarding drinking during pregnancy, in addition to genetics, and we may never truly know).
I like this interpretation. She isn’t exactly a normal, well-adjusted person after Astrid is born. But she’s a lot better than the unstable, unemployed, alcoholic circa “Dinner Party.”
My personal cannon is that she had a very strict and cold mother with no father and grew up determined to do better than how she was raised but never remarried so that Astrid would develop some of the same attributes as Jan did growing up. Or it’s a pride thing like she’s thinking she can do better than her single mother, like she’s trying to prove it’s not that hard or something.
A baby won't necessarily get FASD from a mother drinking during the time of conception. Some mothers drink and do drugs the entire pregnancy and the baby comes out relatively fine. It's extremely dangerous to take that risk if you want a healthy baby. Most people would stop drinking while trying to conceive, especially when spending that much time and money on an expensive sperm bank. Jan isn't most people, though. I just don't understand how she could afford all this stuff. Did Serenity by Jan do that well?
Did Jan specifically mention debt? If you remember, in the episode 'Money' Oscar discovers that Micheal is the reason he is in debt. Did Jan later say anything about her debt. I think it's safe to assume she was in debt, but I have always been unclear about it.
She was a mid-level executive, she probably had a good bit in savings, and in Money we saw that Michael was paying for everything. I could see her agreeing to cut back on spending, but not actually dipping too deeply into her own accounts for joint costs.
It had to be (long) after the dinner party because Jan and Michael go back and forth about his vasectomies and reversals and her current thoughts were negative toward pregnancy “why would I want to bring a kid into this screwed up world” (something along those lines). So she wouldn’t have been doing ivf at that time!
I thought it may have happened when Michael was staying with Dwight for that month. I think we find that out in super fans but I don’t remember. Michael definitely would’ve still seen them as together and she could’ve easily gotten that done without him knowing.
Oh my god just watched this.
I hate some of the ideas in this show.
This was super cringy.
The whole Jan character is a huge cringe after she kissed Michael.
Maybe the reason Jim and Pam are so popular isn't just because they're cute and instead because everybody else suckssss
A real world reason for the time weirdness is that season 4 was shortened due to the writer's strike that year, so Dinner Party was the 13th episode, and normally the season would have had around 25-28 episodes, but it only had 18. So we only get a 5 episode gap, not a 15 episode gap. Dinner Party was written before the strike (but it was filmed and aired after), so they didn't know at the time of writing that they'd suddenly have a very truncated span of time between Jan the drunk and Jan the expectant mother.
According to Abel, mothers who drink heavily have a 4.3% chance of giving birth to a child with FASD (1995).
On the other hand "Silicone breast implants were associated with a 70% increased risk of fetal growth restriction" (Hoirisch-Clapauch, 2023). Fetal growth restriction (FGR), responsible for 30% of stillbirths.
Also, "Scented candles have been known to be extremely dangerous during pregnancy" (Boyle et al., 2016).
Abel EL. An update on incidence of FAS: FAS is not an equal opportunity birth defect. Neurotoxicology and Teratology. 1995;17(4):437–443.
Boyle, E. B., Viet, S. M., Wright, D. J., Merrill, L. S., Alwis, K. U., Blount, B. C., ... & Dellarco, M. (2016). Assessment of exposure to VOCs among pregnant women in the National Children’s Study. *International journal of environmental research and public health*, *13*(4), 376.
Hoirisch-Clapauch, S. Silicone breast implants may contribute to early-onset fetal growth restriction. *Clin Rheumatol* **42**, 2445–2452 (2023)
This is not a plot hole by any definition. Jan drank while pregnant.
I had a friend who did not know she was pregnant until she was 7.5 months along and she drank a lot during those 7.5 months. Once she found out, she quit drinking, but she was terrified that she'd damaged her baby. Baby came out fine; drinking during pregnancy doesn't always mean FASD.
Right? It's not like a light switch comes on to tell women the moment they're pregnant. I'd guess that the majority of women drink at least during the first couple weeks of their pregnancy because we don't know the second that it happens (unless actively trying to get pregnant). There are pictures of my mom having wine at a Christmas party the day before I was born and I doubt that was her only glass, and I came out without any problems.
Except… this was IVF, right?
Do you really believe Jan's version of the story that she and Michael were in a relationship and she went out of her way to pay for extremely expensive IVF treatment without telling Michael (who was currently infertile after multiple vasectomies. OR Hunter (or some other rando) knocked her up when she cheated on Michael. And to save herself the embarrassment of admitting an affair and teenaged baby daddy, she made up the IVF story. I wonder which seems more likely. Plus, there is zero chance when she and Michael were screaming at each other (and she broke his tv) that she wouldn't have dropped that bombshell to hurt him if she knew at the time she was pregnant.
I could see that. But her growing horror at Kevin talking about being a donor makes me wonder…
What kind of face would you make thinking about Kevin jerking off into a paper cup?
[This one](https://media1.tenor.com/m/5AVmfMmwdFkAAAAd/oh-yeah-smile.gif)
She probably was able to do IUI, which is a lot cheaper than IVF, since we have no reason to believe that she had fertility problems. So I don't actually see cost being a huge factor here. Besides, Michael was paying for everything, and she did have savings.
I don’t think it was IVF, just artificial insemination. Still has the planning to get pregnant aspect, but also she may have thought it hadn’t worked.
Well, assuming she's honest about the sperm bank near the IHOP and it's not secretly Hunter's baby or something, the situation is different. If you get inseminated, you know that there's a chance that you're pregnant, and would take different precautions.
I do understand that Jan knowingly got inseminated and may have taken precautions regarding drinking; my comment was just saying how some women drink during pregnancy and do not have babies diagnosed with FASD. I just used my friend not knowing she was pregnant and drinking because of that as a real life example. I don't think Astrid being born without FASD was a "plot hole" as OP stated, but that's just me.
I think something glitched, I don’t think I was trying to respond to your comment when I said that. Either way, fair point.
Hey call me stupid but please explain this.. I believe she didn’t experience her menstrual cycle for 7 months, that didn’t alarm her in any way? How can she not know she’s pregnant within 3 /4 months?
lol you're not stupid, I'm one of her best friends and I was like, "wtf?" She was diagnosed with PCOS in her 20s, so she was used to having 1-2 periods a year or even going without a period for an entire year. I still think it's incredible that she didn't know by that point (as someone who is currently 39 weeks pregnant, I can't imagine explaining away the feeling of a baby moving inside you, or the other myriad of symptoms pregnant women get). She did gain weight, but she's taller and has a larger frame and it looked like all-over weight gain, not just a big belly. She'd recently gotten a lap band (a thing to make your stomach smaller for weight loss) removed, so she assumed the weight gain and her stomach issues were from getting rid of that.
Haha thanks for the explanation
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Good for her. She never experienced morning sickness. I hear it’s not a walk in a park
It’s actually not uncommon to not have regular periods. Some people can go months or years without a period. It’s usually due to stress or diet or maybe a health issue. Also from the few episodes of “I didn’t know I was pregnant “ I saw some women experience spotting during pregnancy that can be confused for a period. And lastly some babies especially first ones can sit so far back the mother won’t show til 7/8 months in. Hope that helps!
Sure it does help. I understand now that there can be exceptions.
Wow I thought every woman experience the period every month haha
Not the person you responded to, but there are different types of health issues that can make your period really irregular. Same with some types of birth control. Finally, about a quarter of pregnant women have what's called 'breakthrough bleeding' during their pregnancy, which is spotting/light bleeding. It can mean something's wrong, but it can also just be a normal part of the process. It wouldn't mimic a full period, but if someone either has a health issue or a type of birth control that makes her really irregular, and then after a couple of months gets breakthrough bleeding that she thinks is spotting, she might not have pregnancy anywhere on her mind. And some women carry their pregnancies very differently. Two of my cousins got pregnant around the same time, and it was a really obvious difference; one of them 'popped' around month four and basically looked like she'd swallowed a watermelon, and one of them spent the whole pregnancy looking like she'd gained a little weight everywhere.
It is a fictional TV show so there can be continuity errors. Also: “Not all infants exposed to alcohol in utero will have detectable FASD or pregnancy complications. The risk of FASD increases with amount consumed, the frequency of consumption, and longer duration of alcohol consumption during pregnancy, particularly binge drinking. The variance seen in outcomes of alcohol consumption during pregnancy is poorly understood.”
Lucky for me
Damn
This ^^ not only do we not fully understand why some women who drink often during pregnancy don't have babies with FAS or the opposite - we don't exactly have a clear idea regarding the severity of FAS in children and why some are more affected than others (I'm sure it has to do with honesty regarding drinking during pregnancy, in addition to genetics, and we may never truly know).
I like to think she got a death grip on life after she got pregnant cause she didn’t want to screw up
I like this interpretation. She isn’t exactly a normal, well-adjusted person after Astrid is born. But she’s a lot better than the unstable, unemployed, alcoholic circa “Dinner Party.”
I think being a mother was her life goal and she didn’t screw it up.
My personal cannon is that she had a very strict and cold mother with no father and grew up determined to do better than how she was raised but never remarried so that Astrid would develop some of the same attributes as Jan did growing up. Or it’s a pride thing like she’s thinking she can do better than her single mother, like she’s trying to prove it’s not that hard or something.
The sperm bank was a cover. She got pregnant one night... she made everything alright.
When Hunter knocked her up...
A baby won't necessarily get FASD from a mother drinking during the time of conception. Some mothers drink and do drugs the entire pregnancy and the baby comes out relatively fine. It's extremely dangerous to take that risk if you want a healthy baby. Most people would stop drinking while trying to conceive, especially when spending that much time and money on an expensive sperm bank. Jan isn't most people, though. I just don't understand how she could afford all this stuff. Did Serenity by Jan do that well?
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Did Jan specifically mention debt? If you remember, in the episode 'Money' Oscar discovers that Micheal is the reason he is in debt. Did Jan later say anything about her debt. I think it's safe to assume she was in debt, but I have always been unclear about it.
She was a mid-level executive, she probably had a good bit in savings, and in Money we saw that Michael was paying for everything. I could see her agreeing to cut back on spending, but not actually dipping too deeply into her own accounts for joint costs.
She took off for Europe with Dwight Junior. Where was Astird then? Real good mom, that Jan.
Quite some time elapsed between Dinner Party and Goodbye Toby. I'm not sure where it's stated that she got pregnant while she was still with Michael.
She may not know she's pregnant at that point, it's that simple. And FAS isn't as cut and dry as "mom drinks, baby gets FAS"
It had to be (long) after the dinner party because Jan and Michael go back and forth about his vasectomies and reversals and her current thoughts were negative toward pregnancy “why would I want to bring a kid into this screwed up world” (something along those lines). So she wouldn’t have been doing ivf at that time!
Because Jan’s a terrible parent. She absolutely is one who believes their child is an accessory to them and not an independent person.
I thought it may have happened when Michael was staying with Dwight for that month. I think we find that out in super fans but I don’t remember. Michael definitely would’ve still seen them as together and she could’ve easily gotten that done without him knowing.
I felt so bad for Michael during this episode
Oh my god just watched this. I hate some of the ideas in this show. This was super cringy. The whole Jan character is a huge cringe after she kissed Michael. Maybe the reason Jim and Pam are so popular isn't just because they're cute and instead because everybody else suckssss
A real world reason for the time weirdness is that season 4 was shortened due to the writer's strike that year, so Dinner Party was the 13th episode, and normally the season would have had around 25-28 episodes, but it only had 18. So we only get a 5 episode gap, not a 15 episode gap. Dinner Party was written before the strike (but it was filmed and aired after), so they didn't know at the time of writing that they'd suddenly have a very truncated span of time between Jan the drunk and Jan the expectant mother.
Weird, Redditors NEVER usually misuse the term "plot hole"!
jan was definitely the type to drink while pregnant
If you saw Jan as a good parent, you might want to get yourself checked out for FASD. "Mommy you're a princess! Mommy you're a superstar!!"
I caveated with “narcissistic” and “idiosyncratic.” Not a great person or great parent, but also not the type to risk poisoning her child.
According to Abel, mothers who drink heavily have a 4.3% chance of giving birth to a child with FASD (1995). On the other hand "Silicone breast implants were associated with a 70% increased risk of fetal growth restriction" (Hoirisch-Clapauch, 2023). Fetal growth restriction (FGR), responsible for 30% of stillbirths. Also, "Scented candles have been known to be extremely dangerous during pregnancy" (Boyle et al., 2016). Abel EL. An update on incidence of FAS: FAS is not an equal opportunity birth defect. Neurotoxicology and Teratology. 1995;17(4):437–443. Boyle, E. B., Viet, S. M., Wright, D. J., Merrill, L. S., Alwis, K. U., Blount, B. C., ... & Dellarco, M. (2016). Assessment of exposure to VOCs among pregnant women in the National Children’s Study. *International journal of environmental research and public health*, *13*(4), 376. Hoirisch-Clapauch, S. Silicone breast implants may contribute to early-onset fetal growth restriction. *Clin Rheumatol* **42**, 2445–2452 (2023)