TH I S TH E MOST MUM?

Emma Brown had never planned on having a big family. In fact, she didn’t want kids at all! ‘I enjoyed my social life way too much, and all I dreamed of was having a great career and travelling the world,’ explains Emma.

But now, at 31, Emma is a mum to four kids – Sofie, 12, Sarah, 11, Stevie, five, and one-year-old Reginald.

And each child was born against the odds.

At 17, Emma met 18-yearold truck driver Leigh in a club.

She’d had the 99 per centeffective contraceptive injection and had no intention of getting pregnant, but after returning from a girls’ holiday less than a year into her relationship with Leigh, she didn’t feel too well...

‘At first, I put it down to drinking too much and not getting enough sleep,’ says Emma, from Middlesex, UK.

‘But when I started being sick and getting stomach cramps, I thought there was something seriously wrong. I’d also put on weight, but I didn’t put two and two together.’

Worried, Emma went to her doctor and when a pregnancy test came back positive, she couldn’t believe it. Even more shocking was the fact that she was almost six months along!

‘I was stunned,’ admits Emma. ‘How could I be pregnant? OK, so I hadn’t had periods for ages, but that wasn’t unusual with the contraceptive jab... but I was still slim... there was no bump showing!’

The couple were living together and even though they’d never spoken about having kids, Leigh threw himself into preparing for the unexpected birth.

Then, on a Saturday night just two months after the discovery, Emma went into labour. After a mere 45 minutes, baby Sofie was born.

‘It was love at first sight. Sofie was perfect! I’d never felt happiness like it,’ the mum says.

Despite being besotted with her new baby, Emma, aged 19, went on the pill. She was very careful to never miss taking one, as she didn’t want another baby.

But when Sofie was just over a year old, in April 2006, Emma started feeling sick and knew instantly she was pregnant – once again, she was almost six months gone!

She hadn’t had any periods since before Sofie’s birth, due to the hormones in the contraceptive injection – and taking the pill afterwards had meant that her periods hadn’t ever returned.

As with her first pregnancy, this one hardly showed – Emma was as slim as ever.

Shocked, Emma underwent tests, but the medics appeared as stumped as she was.

Once again, her labour lasted less than an hour and little baby Sarah was born weighing 3kg in July 2006.

Sadly, in the months that followed, Emma and Leigh broke up – and it wasn’t until four years later that Emma