Just before sunrise on Monday, Kendra Reid awoke suddenly, tip-toed past her sleeping fiancé and headed to the bathroom with a sudden case of abdominal cramps.
In hindsight, the cramps were just like labour pains, but the 23-year-old Ottawa woman had absolutely no reason to believe she was pregnant.
FacebookSurprised and bemused, Kendra Reid is loaded into an ambulance after giving birth.
The past nine months had yielded none of the usual symptoms of pregnancy — no spontaneous vomiting, no cravings and no uterine rumblings. And although she’d gained a few extra pounds, it was not anything pants-splitting.
Still, moments later, with only a single push while sitting on the toilet, Ms. Reid was a mother. The surprise act of nativity did not even wake her sleeping fiancé.
“Naw, this can’t be real,” was the initial response of Mitch Stone, the new father. He told CTV he heard Ms. Reid scream and ran to the bathroom to find her “pulling my baby boy out of the toilet.”
The baby — as yet unnamed and in good condition — weighed more than eight pounds.
Although many dads — even those with nine months’ notice — can be forgiven for being shocked at the sight of their firstborn, Mr. Stone has taken easily to fatherhood.
The 33-year-old audio engineer dubbed the episode a “miraculous birth” on his Facebook page and told CTV by phone “it was the most amazing thing that can happen to you.”
Monday morning, after calling an ambulance, he even had the presence of mind to snap some photos.
FacebookNew father Mitch Stone's first response to the birth of his unexpected son: “Naw, this can’t be real.”
One shot shows a paramedic, wearing blue gloves, a safety vest and a bright headlamp, gingerly carrying the new baby, wrapped in a blanket, through the couple’s living room.
Then, there’s a picture of Ms. Reid, her face equal parts surprise and bemusement, as she is belted into a gurney and loaded into a waiting ambulance. At Ottawa Hospital, the paramedics grin broadly as they wheel her through the front doors.
“How many people can say they successfully birthed their own baby … without warning!” wrote a friend on Ms. Reid’s Facebook page, one of numerous family and friends to barrage the couple with expressions of incredulity on Tuesday.
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Although her near-effortless gestation of a baby may seem unbelievable to any woman who has endured extreme nausea, blotchy skin and the other myriad complications of pregnancy, the condition is familiar to most veteran midwives and maternity ward orderlies.
“Deliveries in which the woman has not been aware of her pregnancy until going into labour occur about three times more often than triplets,” reads a 2002 paper in the
British Medical Journal on the condition, which doctors usually call a “denied pregnancy.”
In the oft-mentioned study, a team of German researchers collected data from obstetric hospitals throughout the newly unified Berlin. In one year, they found 25 women whose pregnancies were “diagnosed” only after they had gone into labour.
Facebook“How many people can say they successfully birthed their own baby … without warning!” wrote a friend on Kendra Reid’s Facebook page.
Unexpected births are common enough to have spawned a four-season reality TV series, the aptly named
I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant.
Ms. Reid was as a regular watcher of the show and, like many, found the premise somewhat ridiculous.
“It’s actually a lot easier to have happen to you than you’d think,” she told CTV Tuesday morning.
For one, despite a common misconception, being obese does not seem to be linked to a sudden birth.
As was the case with Ms. Reid, many women stay relatively trim throughout their pregnancies.
FacebookA paramedic carries Kendra Reid's and Mitch Stone's new baby through their living room.
Sometimes they will even experience a kind of cyclic bleeding that mimics menstruation.
In August, Jodie Smith, a 17-year-old dancer in England, gave birth to an eight-pound baby with only a few hours warning.
“She wasn’t ill and looked just as slim all the way through,” her mother told the
Daily Mail.
Two months earlier, Trish Staine, a 33-year-old Minnesota mother of three, was training for a half-marathon when she was hit by overwhelming back pain. After she checked into an emergency room, doctors delivered her fourth child.
Then there’s the case of a British soldier on active combat duty on Afghanistan who suddenly became a mother.
The Royal Artillery gunner gave birth to a baby boy soon after reporting to a medic with stomach pains.
Wrote Mr. Stone in a Tuesday-night post to friends, his fiancée “didn’t show at all.”
“Everyone that saw her was … in shock that she had a baby.”
As for the new mother, her mantra now is “expect the unexpected.”
“The shock has worn off quite a bit actually, we were in extreme shock the other day,” she told the
National Post.
“Mitch was running around the house, screaming, hyperventilating, but now we’ve pretty much come to terms that we’ve been thrust into parenthood and honestly, this baby makes it very easy for us to love him.
“It’s been shocking, but now we’re starting to get into the groove of things.”
National Post
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