A teenager was shocked when doctors told her she was 34 weeks pregnant after rushing to the hospital because of “appendicitis.
” Not only that, but the pain she was feeling was also actually the start of her labor contractions and gave birth to a baby boy hours later.
Then 17-year-old Courtney Evans had woken up with shooting stomach pains that she and her partner, Bryn Tallett, thought was appendicitis. She was on the pill and had no noticeable baby bump which is why it was a shock to find out she was actually pregnant. The lack of a bump was due to the baby being positioned in her back. Leo Tallett was born weighing 4lb 4oz.
Now 20, Courtney is sharing her story to raise awareness about surprise pregnancies.
Courtney, from Daventry, Northamptonshire, said: “I wouldn’t change it for the world now, he’s my little best friend. I found out in the hospital as I was giving birth, so the minute I found out I was pregnant I was in labor anyway.
“They put him on me and I couldn’t hold him at first. It wasn’t that I didn’t love him, but I was in so much shock. I just needed a minute after giving birth to the child I didn’t know I had. So when everyone was going ‘here’s your baby boy’, I was just thinking, ‘Oh god, I don’t know what to do’.
“I was in the hospital for about four nights, not because of him but because of the situation and them wanting to keep an eye on me.”
Courtney had given birth to Leo “en caul” which means that he was still inside the intact amniotic sac when he was delivered.
Courtney said: “Leo also came out in his bag, it’s rare and people say it’s lucky. He had nothing wrong with him, everything was perfect, and he didn’t have jaundice. When we got home he didn’t lose weight either, which was a big relief.
“I was in a lot of shock, we didn’t even have one nappy, and I was living with my parents at this point. My mom and dad had to go out and buy everything, apparently, they walked into Mothercare and thought ‘what the hell is going on?’.
“Usually you have nine months to prepare but we had no time. It’s mad looking back thinking ‘how didn’t I know?’ but I can understand why I didn’t. They say if you even wee too much it can cancel the pill out, it can be anything.
“Contraceptives aren’t 100 percent anyway, there’s still a chance of getting pregnant. I’ve been on the injections since I’ve had him and that seems to work for me, but different things work for different people.”
Courtney said that her weight had always fluctuated so she didn’t think it was unusual she had gained a small amount of weight when she had Leo.
When she woke up on the morning of September 20, 2016, she thought she was merely having period pains.
Courtney said: “When I woke up it felt like period pains, I just felt like I was having a bad stomach. I was on and off sleep as it was early hours in the morning waking me up. I woke up Leo’s dad, my partner, and said, ‘I’m in a lot of pain now’.
“We walked round to his mum’s to see what she thought and she took me to the hospital thinking it was my appendix. When we went into A&E though they didn’t know the cause of the pain either, so they gave me morphine thinking it was my appendix as well.
“They didn’t know because he was back-to-back so I didn’t have a normal bump like you usually have with a pregnancy – my stomach hadn’t changed at all. I’d put on weight, but it wasn’t what you would usually expect if you were pregnant.
“I’m a bit bigger anyway so it wasn’t just on my stomach, you wouldn’t look at me and think I was pregnant, it was very weird. Another doctor came to look at me and felt my stomach and did a scan, they looked at me and said, ‘that’s your baby’. I remember saying ‘are you joking?’.
“They took me into a separate room on my own and did a few tests and then they took me down to the labor ward. All they could see was his heartbeat and I had to have injections in my back for his lungs. They had his incubator waiting outside when I gave birth.”
Courtney’s mom had to teach her how to care for a newborn, even how to bathe him correctly.
Courtney said: “I’ve never been around newborns in my family. My partner dealt with it a lot better than I did as I was in a lot more shock than he was.
“He held him and fed him and changed him straight away, but he’s been brought up with little brothers. I’d never dealt with a baby in my life whereas he had.
“My family was amazing, parents can react in any way but I couldn’t have done it without them and they helped us with buying things. I was living at their house so they got a room ready for him.
“I’ve got a house on my own now and we’ve lived here for two years, but the first year of his life we lived there and I couldn’t have done it without them. Everybody told me I took to it really well, the first couple of weeks is just a blur to me looking back.
“I took every day as it came really – his feeds and baths – my mom has done it with me and my brother before, so she was telling me everything to do. She was helping me to hold his head in the bath and telling me how to feed him, everything like that.
“It didn’t take me too long to adjust to it, after a few weeks I was enjoying it as any mom should.”
While Leo is “the best thing that’s ever happened” to her, Courtney still doesn’t want to get caught off-guard with “surprise” children. That’s why she switched from the pill to contraceptive injections.
Courtney said: “I’ve been on the injections since I’ve had him and that seems to work for me, but different things work for different people.
“I was worried about the pill not working and I wanted something to be a bit more secure. At this minute, I’m not ready to have another baby.
“The number of times I’ve told this story to people is crazy, if I go to the hairdressers, people still ask me about it. I only live in a small town so pretty much everyone knows I’m the one who had the surprise baby.”
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