A Massachusetts woman had a surprise birth an hour after discovering she was expecting her first child.
On Wednesday, Judy Brown was rushed to Beverly Hospital after experiencing severe abdominal pain. Initially, the 47 year old thought the pain was caused by some sort of blockage or gallstone, ABC News reports. However, medical staff quickly deduced that she was in labour.
“It was a little bit scary getting into the hospital thinking something really bad was going on,” Brown said. “To understand and take in that was I pregnant and was about to go into labour… it was very overwhelming.”
Brown and her husband Jason then welcomed their first child together. Carolyn Rose was born a healthy 8 pounds, 2 ounces.
According to WCVB-5, Brown never suspected she was pregnant and attributed her growing belly to her age and menopause.
Brown and her husband, who have been married for 22 years, have always had an “if it happens, it happens” attitude towards having kids. Now that their baby girl is here, the first-time parents have already begun to call Carolyn “daddy’s little girl.”
While surprise births are rare, they can happen. To explain this phenomenon, Dr. Doug Wilson, the department head of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Calgary, told Global News: “The vast majority of women will have early nausea, will have breast tenderness and things like that and also missing a period. Sometimes if you don’t think it can happen to you, you’re going to deny some of those very normal symptoms and put them down to indigestion, or the flu, or one of those types of things.”
Dr. Kimberly Gecsi, an obstetrician and gynecologist at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Ohio, agreed, saying: “People don’t know sometimes or they’re in denial about it and denial can be pretty strong.”
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