How rare are ‘surprise babies’?
Just two weeks before giving birth to a full-term baby girl, Stacey Cunningham laughed off her doctor’s suggestion she could be pregnant.
In what some would describe as a dream pregnancy, the Ashburton woman never experienced morning sickness or felt her growing baby kick inside her.
She never had cravings, no weight, and had not period in five years
Cunningham is one of dozens of Kiwi women every year delivering babies they know nothing about until days, or moments, before labour.
It was not until a scan after a faint line appeared on a precautionary test at her doctors office that it dawned on the young mother that she was 8 months, 3 weeks and 4 days pregnant with an unexpected baby girl.
A decade after the birth of her daughter Jordanah, she still ‘‘can’t believe it was real’’.
Occurring once in every 7000 pregnancies, last year approximately 30 New Zealand women gave birth to babies they didn’t know existed until they were in labour. Almost 150 woman reached the half-way mark before they had an inkling. Though extremely rare, unexpected births are twice as common as triplets.
Cunningham, like many others in her position, had been diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and was told she had a less than 1 per cent chance of conceiving naturally. She had come off birth control two years previously and thought she would never fall pregnant.
After a precautionary pregnancy test followed by ‘‘how the hell that could happen?’’, she fast-tracked preparations for the surprise baby’s arrival.
‘‘After the scan it was a real whirlwind of finding a midwife and getting what I needed to have a baby... I was given a bit from people, thank god.’’
She said the hardest part was ‘‘the lack of time to prepare and bond with that bundle growing inside of you. It’s amazing how much you bond with them as they grow but when you don’t get to feel gained had a "It's amazing how much you bond with [your baby] as they grow but when you don't get to feel that you actually feel like you have missed out on a lot." that you actually feel like you have missed out on a lot.’’
After a gruelling four day labour, baby Jordanah was born weighing just 2.04kgs and Cunningham was ‘‘handed this strange baby and had to figure out what to do with her’’.
Midwifery advisor Jacqui Anderson said in thirty years, she had seen only one woman truly floored by a birth.
‘‘It’s exceedingly rare and very unusual, but it can happen and everyone [at the hospital] has a story about it.’’
Some women are in situations where for whatever reason they feel they cannot admit their pregnancy so they disguise it, but others are genuinely completely unaware and have no inkling until they are lying in the emergency department, she said.
‘‘A baby the end.’’
Anderson said 99.9 per cent of pregnant women experienced symptoms, so even if the physical change was minimal it would be tough to ignore the cravings, tiredness and nausea.
Women with strong abdominal muscles may hide the bump better but they would still be alerted by always reveals itself in other symptoms, she said.
Those continued to bleed throughout the pregnancy could attribute it to a period, which complicated matters.
‘‘Many, many woman who have been medically diagnosed as unable to have a child would not expect it, and if you don’t expect to be pregnant you can find any number of reasons to ignore the signs.’’
She said although the women missed out on maternity care and risks of complications were not monitored, ‘‘remarkably they seem to get along fine, the human body is quite adaptable.’’