How much time did you have to prepare for the arrival of your first child? A woman from Massachusetts gave birth to a baby girl on Tuesday barely an hour after she discovered she was pregnant.
According to reports, Weymouth town resident Katherine Kropas, 23, sought treatment at South Shore Hospital on Tuesday morning for worsening back pain. Physicians had a difficult time tracing the source of her pain, that is, until they decided to run an ultrasound test and found Kropas was with child.
According to Kropas, doctors took one look and they wheeled her off into labor. She was told that she was having a baby at 10:15pm, and less than an hour later the baby was born at 11:06pm. The baby girl, named Ellie, was born in perfect health and tipped the scales at 10 pounds.
The birth of Ellie was a complete surprise for her mother, but was a welcomed one. She told the media present after the delivery that she exhibited none of the usual signs of pregnancy, such as morning sickness or swollen feet, and had absolutely no idea she was about to become a mother.
Kropas added that she and her partner used birth control and there was no change in her menstrual cycle throughout the entire course of the pregnancy. She did notice, however, that there was some weight gain, but she attributed that gain to the many celebrations of the holidays.
Ellie was a complete surprise, but a welcome one, and the new mother says that she is prepared to give the almost one-week-old child a good life. Kropas and her family said they are relieved that the baby was born in good health, and they are now focused on providing for her needs.
So far, Kropas and her family are having a blast with the baby and taking care of her is just the beginning. While this might sound unusual, hospital officials said that pregnancies like these happen more often than you might think. South Shore Hospital has a couple of surprise pregnancies each and every year.
Statistically speaking, approximately 1 in every 7,000 pregnancies is completely unknown to the mother until the moment she delivers the baby. While women may not experience the typical symptoms of pregnancy, according to Dr. Sabrina Sukhan, OB-GYN at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, there are also women who don't want to be pregnant and unconsciously deny the fact.
"The majority of women who miss the early signs of pregnancy eventually do realize that they're expecting" Sukhan says. "But for those rare moms who make it across the finish line without even realizing they were in the race, there's usually a 'perfect storm' of physical and psychological factors at play."
