Wife Gives Birth to Baby Boy Just Minutes After Learning She Was Pregnant at ER
It’s hard to imagine that someone wouldn’t know they’re pregnant. How can you get all the symptoms and be growing another human being inside of you and still have no clue?
“It was a complete shock,” Farah Hage-Sleiman, who found herself in this situation, said. “I really had no idea I was pregnant.”
Difficult to believe, certainly. Hage-Sleiman is a petite woman who certainly should have noticed some signs, but she was on birth control and had recently gone through a lot of life changes with her fiancé, Derek Roy.
She saw her feet swell, she experienced stomach pain, and her skin broke out. The signs were there, but — believe it or not — she says she met with specialists about those conditions and none of them discovered she was pregnant. So, she assumed it was just stress.
“I just graduated from law school in May and started a new job; we’re planning a wedding,” she said. “We just bought a house and a car.”
“I mean, we have a lot of stressful things going on in our lives right now. It never occurred to me that any of my symptoms were related. I looked at each one individually.”
It was while she was at the gym with Roy that her water broke. Even then, she still didn’t think she was pregnant.
“I was having what I thought were stomach cramps and then suddenly I felt like I had wet my pants,” she said. The cramps weren’t so bad at first, but they got steadily worse until Hage-Sleiman was in severe pain and screaming.
“I’m in the military, and I volunteer with the Belltown firehouse,” Roy said, “so I know what an emergency sounds like, and this was like a sound I’d never heard before.”
They got to the Stamford Hospital ER, where the doctors quickly sorted things out and told them what the cause was.
“I was like, ‘You’re joking, right?’” the mother-to-be said.
“It was scary. After it sunk in that I’m having a baby, then all these really scary questions and thoughts started popping into my head,” Hage-Sleiman said.
“Is he healthy? Is he going to be okay? I started replaying the last seven or eight months in my head. What did I eat? What did I do? Did I do anything that could have hurt him?”
Hage-Sleiman suffers from multiple food allergies, so she attributed her bloat to food-related distress. Stress and allergies seemed to account for most of what she was experiencing.
Dr. Scott Chudnoff agreed that sometimes these misinterpretations happen. “The most common thing a woman might say is that she thought she was experiencing gas or digestive issues,” Chudnoff said. “And for women who are heavier, the weight gain might not actually be that noticeable.”
Little Lucas made it into the world four weeks early, but still healthy. The couple had planned on having children and after the shock wore off, they were excited about the new little one and began building an arsenal of baby necessities.
They plan on holding their wedding this summer and hope to involve Lucas as their ring-bearer. Despite the surprise, this little family is doing well and looking forward to the future!
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