In the early hours of a Sunday morning last autumn, the week before her 18th birthday, Beth told her dad that she was in âabsolute agonyâ. Sheâd been having stomach cramps so intense that she collapsed in college on Wednesday, but she put the constant need to go to the toilet down to IBS. Sheâd taken pregnancy tests weeks before; the result was always negative, and she hadnât had sex since, so when they called 111 and the nurse asked if she was pregnant she said no. But hours later, Beth was taken to A&E where she gave birth to a full-term baby: a 7lbs 5oz girl, later named Maizie.
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In the months leading up to Maizieâs delivery, Beth had just been doing typical teenager stuff: getting bored of her hometown, St-Anneâs-on-the-Sea, studying, seeing a guy from college, who she was starting to go off anyway, working shifts at her local Wetherspoons, doing army riot training, and drinking at Blackpool Pleasure Beach with her friends.She showed me pictures from her last holiday in August. Sheâs visibly slim â eight stone, she tells me â with a flat stomach, and no sign that she would have been seven months pregnant at the time. At this point in a pregnancy, most people would have a prominent bump, and wouldâve been able to feel their now cabbage-sized baby moving around for the previous two months or so. But Beth didnât.
She had a cryptic pregnancy â one that goes undetected by home pregnancy tests, produces no bump and comes with minimal symptoms (and those symptoms can easily be mistaken for other conditions anyway). Recent figures say these happen in approximately one in 475 pregnancies. Some women with cryptic pregnancies find out seven or eight months in, but there are many women who, like Beth, find out that theyâre pregnant literally as they start giving birth.There are multiple reasons for the occurrence of a cryptic pregnancy, which include: having two wombs so the baby forms in the one closest to the spine and no bump is formed, having a tilted cervix, or producing low levels of hCG (the hormone produced by pregnant women and picked up by home pregnancy tests). These problems can fly under the radar because there's no way someone would know how many wombs they have, most people do not undergo routine ultrasounds, and youâd only check your hCG levels once you knew you were pregnant.
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Every so often a new cryptic pregnancy story appears in the media. See âOldham teenager in coma wakes up with 'surprise' babyâ or âWoman, 22, who only realised she was pregnant when she gave BIRTHâ. These stories are shocking and, in the latter case, greeted with judgment, and they do little to explain the experience of a cryptic pregnancy and what happens to these women afterwards. So I traced the stories of three mothers â Beth, Klara and Lily â to find out what happens when you give birth unexpectedly. How do you come to terms with 'surprise' motherhood? How do you deal with the judgement that comes from it?
âWe went to A&E because I had started bleeding and [the nurse] was like, âWell I think youâre pregnant and about to have a baby,ââ says Beth, while bouncing a now six-month-old Maizie on her knee. âSo I was given a huge tank of gas and air and rushed to delivery. Turns out I was 9cm dilated and you have to be 10cm to start pushing. So around two hours later, she was out.â Did she feel scared? âI wasnât really thinking of much at the time,â she says. âI was more bothered about getting out of pain, to be fair.âFor Klara, who had a cryptic pregnancy in 2016 when she was 22, the fear that enveloped her was that she was having a miscarriage. âIn my head Iâm thinking, maybe this is a miscarriage?â she says. âBut if it was a miscarriage then Iâd be nine months pregnant by now because thatâs the last time I had slept with someone.â She remembers how her neighbour came to help her when she heard her screaming â âI told her I was having a miscarriage, and I needed an ambulance to come.â
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Klara had woken up on the morning of her first day at a new job with âterrible period-like crampsâ, and her mum encouraged her to take painkillers and continue her day as usual. The pain became too intense and she left work early, arriving home just hours before she gave birth to her daughter, Amelia â now three years old â while on the toilet. âI was sitting on it and my body just lifted itself,â Klara tells me, getting off the sofa and squatting to demonstrate. âMy cervix tilted forward and I caught Amelia, just before she fell into the toilet,â she says holding her hands between her legs.
âI had four paramedics peering into my tiny bathroom,â she continues. âLuckily, one of them was a lovely mumsy type and she just held me while I cried and cried and cried. Itâs all such a massive blur. I donât know if Iâve repressed it, itâs just such a stressful point, realising that everything is about to change. All I was thinking was, âI need someone to help me clean the toilet because what if my mum comes home and finds this bloodbath in the bathroom?â So one of the paramedics gave it a little swirl.âOften when these stories arise, most people ask how itâs possible to not realise. âI walk around the house naked sometimes and there was nothing for mum to say I was pregnant, so she was the most shocked," says Beth. Klaraâs body didnât change much throughout her pregnancy either. âI was a stone slimmer than I am now,â she says. And periods were no indicator for her, as she'd been on the combination Pill for around six months. âI hadnât had a period for about five of those months. I did have slight spotting, but it wasnât like a full-blown period, so in my head I was like, âThis is a period, so itâs fine.ââ
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Lily was also on the pill when she experienced a cryptic pregnancy at 18. She found out two months before she was due to give birth to her now one-year-old son Archie. She was living with her boyfriend of one year and his family, working 50-hour weeks as a restaurant manager and waitress. âPeople were saying that I had filled out and I was glowing,â she says, âbut I had been eating a lot more and had filled out everywhere. It wasnât a bump or anything like that. I took two pregnancy tests, and they both came back negative, so obviously I thought, âIâm just putting on weight, not pregnant.ââBut a few months later, Lily started to feel kicks, so she took a third pregnancy test. âIt came back positive, and I was rushed to hospital for an emergency ultrasound, where they confirmed I was 30 weeks pregnant.âAside from the experience of giving birth with little or no prior warning, having a cryptic pregnancy means no access to prenatal care; itâs a world without check-ups or antenatal classes. Luckily, all three children in these cases were born completely healthy with no complications, but Beth, Klara and Lily all shared the fear that not knowing they were pregnant could have put their childrenâs lives at risk. âI was drinking, I was a Sunday smoker and I was a bar manager for Christâs sake,â Klara says. âI was doing 12-hour days and moving kegs around, at eight months pregnant.â Lily had frequent nightmares about Archieâs health before he was born. âIf he was born with disabilities, it would be entirely my fault,â she says. âObviously, I stopped drinking and taking drugs as soon as I found out.â
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Anyone whoâs ever had a never-ending migraine, or a cough that lasts weeks has likely opted to avoid going to the doctor. Not only would you have to miss work, it would probably take three weeks to get an appointment anyway, and itâs going to be gone by then â so you just donât go. Klara says she should have visited her GP, but was too scared. âLiterally two weeks before, the top half of my stomach was very hard and I didnât know what it was,â she says. âI should have gone to the doctorâs to see whatâs wrong but that was me being young and silly and burying my head.âLily also didnât seek medical advice when she experienced abdominal cramps. âI remember saying to my friend, 'I feel like this,'â Lily says, âand my friend was like âme tooâ and because we were on the same Pill, I thought it was something normal.â Add to this the fact that doctors often downplay womenâs health concerns, with studies finding that womenâs pain is taken less seriously than menâ, it's easy to see how symptoms can be left unchecked.On top of that, cryptic pregnancy claims are often doubted, and Beth believes that her age was the main reason social workers at the hospital were sceptical of hers. They decided that it was a âconcealed pregnancyâ â where women donât tell anyone theyâre pregnant and therefore fail to access any antenatal care. So they kept her in for five days while they assessed her and her home. âThe social worker said to me, âIf only you were to have her a week later, youâd be out straight away.â That hurt me, because she said it in a malicious way, like it was good timing that they caught me.â When people from college found out about Beth having a baby, the rumours started. âThey say that sheâs not mine, that I adopted her, or that sheâs my dadâs baby,â Beth says. âSome said that I knew, but Iâm not a nasty person â I wouldnât put a baby in danger.â
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When Klaraâs story first broke in the Daily Mail, she received a range of hateful comments branding her as stupid for not realising she was pregnant. âI was really not experienced at all,â she says, âso I just said whatever and didnât think of the consequences or how the writer would put it. I got a huge amount of backlash.â Beth first heard about them from a soap. âIt was Eastenders, and Sonia â which also happens to be my middle name â has one. Itâs weird because [the episode] came out the year I was born.â Only later did she discover that her best friendâs mum had also experienced a cryptic pregnancy.All three women are surprised at how well theyâve taken to parenting, shushing cries, mopping up dribbling mouths and tending to bumps while I interviewed them, despite never wanting to have children and using birth control to actively stop that from happening. They all say that things definitely would have been different if they'd had a detectable pregnancy. âI would have had an abortion to be fair,â Beth says. âBut I couldnât imagine that at all now.âTheir doctors have told them that itâs unlikely to happen to someone more than once, but there is still some fear around having sex again. âIâm very paranoid about having sex. Not that I wouldnât do it again, Iâd just think very long before doing it,â Beth says. Lily agrees. âI feel like, you can do everything you can to stop it and it will still happen. Itâs changed my outlook on sex. I think I had PTSD from the whole experience.âBeth is raising her daughter as a single parent, as Maizieâs father has decided not to be a part of her life, but her friends and family, especially her dad, have been all the support she needs. âItâs just happiness all around.â Beth says while smiling down at Maizie, gently rubbing her chin: âEveryone loves you, donât they?âAlthough she has since had to grapple with anxiety and postpartum depression, Lily is still looking forward to the future â âIâm happy with just Archie right now, but I would like to have more kids,â she says. Klara believes motherhood came at the perfect time for her. âBefore Amelia was born, I was kind of just floating about and didnât quite have a point. I was wondering, âWhat am I going to do with my life?â I had a law degree and I wasnât doing anything with it. But now, Iâve found my calling.âBeth too credits the birth of Maizie with helping her to move forward. âA lot of people have said to me are you gutted because you canât live your life?â she says. âBut I can.â Sheâs going back to college in September, and plans to go to university next year to study Sports and Public Services before joining the Border Force. âIf anything sheâs made everyoneâs lives better,â Beth says.