Journey Richardson was sitting in the bathtub after a hellish shift at work when her stomach ache from earlier that day suddenly started making sense.
The Alaskan teen, who was 17 at the time, looked between her legs in the water and was surprised to see the top of a baby’s head.
Despite having no idea she was pregnant until that moment, she realized she was in labor.
Alone in the bath and frantically searching for tips on Google between contractions, Mrs. Richardson gave birth to her daughter and, due to a lack of sterile medical equipment, had to bite off the umbilical cord herself and tie it with a hair elastic.
The traumatic experience turned into a nightmare when Mrs Richardson saw her newborn baby was purple and not breathing.
She was forced to perform life-saving CPR until baby Finnley took his first breath.
Journey is depicted holding her daughter Finnley, who was born unexpectedly. Journey did not gain weight or experience any signs of pregnancy, and had no idea what she was expecting until the moment of delivery. (Photo courtesy of Journey’s Instagram)
Although Journey has not had standard prenatal care and screenings, including regular visits to an obstetrician, Finnley is generally healthy, with the exception of seven fused vertebrae. Photo courtesy of Journey’s Instagram
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One in 2,500 women carry a baby to term without ever knowing they are pregnant, making a cryptic pregnancy about three times more common than the chance of triplets.
For starters, Mrs. Richardson, a little person from Anchorage, never showed any signs of pregnancy.
She didn’t gain weight and didn’t experience any symptoms that couldn’t be explained by anything else.
Mrs. Richardson has an inverted uterus, meaning her uterus tilts backward toward the spine instead of forward toward the abdomen, which has prevented her abdomen from growing.
A doctor wrongly attributed her light, irregular periods and cramps to an ovarian cyst.
Because her pregnancy was never recognized, she never underwent the usual checks and scans to look for congenital abnormalities.
As a result, Finnley was born with Klippel-Feil syndrome, a condition in which two or more of the seven cervical vertebrae of the neck are abnormally fused.
In Finnley’s case, all seven vertebrae are fused, limiting any neck movement and leading to serious spinal and back tissue complications.
Although it cannot be prevented, the condition can usually be detected on an ultrasound before birth.
Finnley faces a long road full of surgeries to strengthen and support her spine. Doctors may also need to remove parts of her vertebrae to create space for the spinal cord and nerves to prevent neurological changes. (Photo courtesy of GoFundMe)
Mrs. Richardson said her cramps started on a Saturday evening in March 2023: ‘I had dinner with my family on Saturday night for my mother’s birthday and went back to the house where I was dog-sitting, took some ibuprofen and thought, ‘it’ll go away, it is fine, it’s just menstrual cramps.”
Her periods had never come on a regular schedule for much of her life, and she thought her upcoming period was causing the abdominal pain.
Women who experience a cryptic pregnancy may still have irregular bleeding that is different from a period, but often mistaken as such.
Because pregnancy typically stops a woman’s periods, she is less likely to suspect pregnancy if she is still bleeding for part of the month.
Mrs. Richardson continued, “So then I wake up at four in the morning on Sunday with these cramps, and they just get worse, and then they go away.
‘I work from 7 to 10 that morning and that shift was hell. It was so bad. I thought my ovarian cyst had ruptured, so I went back to my house and grabbed some Epsom salts to bathe in to ease the pain.”
By the time she took her bath, it was around noon on Sunday.
She said: ‘It’s getting worse and worse and worse, and I thought, this is bad. It’s to the point where I’m hallucinating because of the pain. I scream in pain.
‘Finally I feel, to see if I can sense something is wrong, and I feel her head. And that’s when I realized what was happening when I felt her hair.”
She did not immediately call 911 because she was shocked
When Finnley was born, her skin was purple and she wasn’t breathing. Ms. Richardson, whose father is an emergency medical technician (EMT) and teaches life-saving CPR classes, knew how to get her baby’s heart beating faster.
But that was just the beginning of her potentially deadly ordeal. The placenta – a temporary organ that forms in the uterus and connects the mother and fetus – did not emerge naturally from the womb after the baby was born, causing heavy bleeding.
Even in a state of shock and delirium, Mrs. Richardson knew, “This is not safe.”
She said, “I was bleeding way more than what the internet thought was cool because, oh yeah, I was doing my Google searches in between contractions trying to figure out what the hell to do.”
She knew she had to cut the umbilical cord holding her to Finnley, but didn’t have access to a sterilized device.
“I had no other choice so I ended up having to bite it off and tie it with a hair tie, so I did the best I could in the circumstances I had,” she said.
When Finnley was born, Journey did not immediately seek medical attention, despite losing a lot of blood. She was nervous because her father, an EMT, heard about the birth. Photo courtesy of Journey’s Instagram
She called a friend to help her after Finnley was born, but didn’t want to call 911. Her father would find out, she said, still in a hazy state of shock.
But her friend eventually called 911, and the EMTs who arrived immediately recognized her.
Despite being nervous about her father’s reaction, Mrs Richardson said her family were very supportive of her and Finnley, who was born with a birth defect.
Finnley faces a long road full of operations to strengthen and support the spine. Doctors may also need to remove parts of her vertebrae to create space for the spinal cord and nerves to prevent neurological changes.
Cryptic pregnancies can be dangerous. A woman who does not know she is pregnant does not receive standard prenatal care, such as blood tests, ultrasounds and nutritional advice.
She may also not know that she needs to make necessary lifestyle changes, such as abstaining from alcohol and drugs, which can be fatal for both mother and baby.
Although the way Finnley was born wasn’t exactly ideal, Mrs Richardson said she wouldn’t change a thing.
She said: ‘I love Finn more than I’ve ever loved anything in my life, and I’m very grateful that I had her the way I did because I didn’t plan on ever having children and I think not that I would have experienced this love if I had not had it as I did.’