I went into hospital with what I thought was a stomach bug… then doctors told me I was pregnant and in LABOR
- The 33-year-old mother of two children complained of severe abdominal pain in the hospital
- She probably suffered from contractions because she quickly gave birth to a girl
- READ MORE: Woman who didn’t know she was pregnant gives birth on TOILET
A woman in Paraguay went to the hospital with stomach pains and then walked out with a newborn daughter.
The 33-year-old mother of two did not realize she was pregnant and only complained of severe abdominal pain. When doctors at her local hospital asked if she was pregnant, she confidently said no.
But they discovered that she was already far into the labor process, so close to giving birth that she did not have enough time to get to the nearby maternity hospital.
The woman gave birth to a girl naturally. She and her newborn are healthy and doing well.
The 33-year-old mother of two gave birth to a 2.5kg baby girl last weeks after going to hospital complaining of stomach pains
After the baby was born, she and the mother were taken to the local maternity hospital. She and the baby are doing well
The unnamed woman from the Paraguayan city of Itauguá went to the IPS hospital last week with severe abdominal pain. After a fainting spell, doctors took her to an observation room where she insisted she was not pregnant.
When she started bleeding profusely, a gynecologist performed an examination which showed that she was fully dilated.
Despite having given birth twice before, she had no idea the third birth was just minutes away.
She gave birth to a girl weighing 6.6 pounds, which is considered a normal birth weight. She and her daughter were also taken to the city’s maternity hospital.
It is relatively rare for a woman to carry a baby without knowing she is pregnant, although this may be more common than people think.
An estimated one in 400 to 500 women has a so-called ‘cryptic pregnancy’, also known as a stealth pregnancy. The term generally applies to women who are at least five months pregnant before they realize it.
And an estimated one in 2,500 only knows that they are pregnant just before giving birth.
Many women mistakenly believe that they cannot become pregnant if they use contraception. But no form of contraception is 100 percent effective.
And many types of birth control cause a woman to stop menstruating for a while or cause periodic bleeding that does not indicate a period.
A temporary cessation of menstruation is a sign of pregnancy, but in the case of contraceptives that disrupt a normal cycle, women may not recognize that a missed period is a symptom of pregnancy.
Every woman carries pregnancy weight differently, and for some women, the appearance of a baby bump comes later in pregnancy or remains small, which can make pregnancy harder to spot.
The severe abdominal pain that brought the Paraguayan woman to the hospital may have been normal contractions, caused by the contraction and relaxation of the uterus, pushing the baby out of the womb.