Woman Positive She Has Food Poisoning, Has No Clue She's Actually Pregnant and In Labor
My family has a Brazilian friend who has led a fascinating life, and every one of her loved ones is also downright interesting.
For example, one day her oldest daughter began to feel poorly and suspected she was seriously ill — like, cancer ill. But when she went to the doctor, she discovered that her radiating abdominal discomfort wasn’t a pancreatic tumor.
Instead, she was about to give birth, and she had no idea that she was pregnant. While it sounds incredible, a case out of Keyport, New Jersey, shows that such surprise pregnancies really do happen.
According to Healthline, such cases are called cryptic pregnancies. They can happen in roughly one out of every 500 pregnancies.
Why and how do they happen? Experts can’t point to a single deciding factor, but a number of possibilities may come into play.
Some women simply have irregular cycles or may be entering menopause, which can confuse pregnancy symptoms. Highly athletic women with low body fat and low hormone levels may also run into similar issues, as can certain disorders like polycystic ovary syndrome.
None of these hypotheses provide a definitive explanation, though, particularly when it came to Patricia Crawford and her husband Evan Darragh. News 12 New Jersey reported that Crawford had experienced a debilitating tragedy relatively recently.
She’d lost her father a year before. His death proved particularly difficult for her to mentally manage.
“I was kind of just getting through day by day, keeping myself as busy as possible,” she said. “Just zooming around.”
As the anniversary of his passing arrived, Crawford began to experience some strangely unpleasant symptoms. In fact, she became convinced that she had food poisoning.
Wracked with nausea and unable to sleep, she went to the restroom on March 28, trying to get a little relief. Much to her gobsmacked shock, she began to deliver a perfectly healthy infant right there and then.
She said, “By the time I got back to the toilet area, all of a sudden a baby came sliding out. It was just like … ‘What are we even going to do?’ …
“We [didn’t] have a diaper, a wipe, an outfit, a onesie. Nothing.”
However, she and Darragh were overjoyed.
In fact, the couple had unsuccessfully tried for a baby for some time. Even more amazing, their little one arrived on the anniversary of Crawford’s father’s death — perhaps the reason the couple decided to name the baby William James after him.
“I think my sister said it best,” Crawford stated. “She (said) it was like my dad came from heaven and said, ‘You will no longer be sad on March 28 (ever) again.’ And it’s really the best thing in the world.”
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