One night, TikToker AnaBelen Paul (@anabelenpaul) was experiencing extreme pain in her lower back and stomach. Her mom drove her to the hospital because she never usually complained about pain at all, so she knew this must be serious. But what she did not expect was to leave with a newborn baby.
They drove 45 minutes to the best hospital, got checked in, and waited for about half an hour. Then, they drew her blood and found that her white blood cell count was high.
They thought she had kidney stones. However, the situation took a shocking turn.
Ten minutes later, the doctor came back into the room and announced that she was pregnant. AnaBelen thought she must just be a couple of months along.
But when the doctor conducted an examination, the tone shifted dramatically. He ordered the nurses to rush her to a room in the labor and delivery unit. Reality set in—she was in active labor.
“They struggled to find a heartbeat because my placenta was in the front, blocking so much of the things,” AnaBelen explained.
“And that’s why I never felt her kick. I never felt any movement this entire pregnancy at all whatsoever. Shocking. Weird. I’m just as confused as everybody else is.”
Initially, they couldn’t tell if the baby was a boy or a girl. The doctor asked if she wanted an epidural, but she turned it down because she didn’t want to deal with a giant needle.
After about 30 minutes, she gave birth to a healthy baby girl, still processing the fact that she’d gone from possibly having kidney stones to becoming a mother within such a short span of time.
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Her story quickly went viral. In the comments section, many TikTok users shared their own experiences of going to the hospital for a specific medical issue and returning home with a surprise baby.
“As someone who was 95 pounds and went to the ER for appendicitis and found out I was six months pregnant, I get it,” stated one user.
“My ovarian cyst is 11. Doctor told me I had a cyst so didn’t think anything of it. Yeah, I was pregnant and didn’t find out until a couple of weeks later,” commented another.
“I went to the ER because I thought I had a herniated disc in my back. I was 29 weeks pregnant. My little back pain is five now,” chimed in a third.
“A friend’s mom went in to have gall bladder surgery, and they pulled out a baby girl. It was her sixth baby, and she never knew she was pregnant,” added someone else.
AnaBelen and the above commenters all had what are called cryptic pregnancies. They are rare, but these stories are proof that they do happen. Sometimes, life’s biggest surprises arrive with zero warning.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
