A Canadian woman who went to hospital with crippling back pain, was stunned to give birth to a healthy baby girl just a few hours later.
According to The Metro, Josephine Anglin, 20, she had no idea she was pregnant until she arrived at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital’s emergency room late Monday night.
Anglin said she had just finished her shift at 6 p.m. and was visiting her mom when she started to experience back pain. As she had hurt her back previously, Anglin said she assumed the same injury had come back and she brushed off the pain.
But when she later went home to fiancé Jonathan Phillips, the pain continued to get worse and the young couple decided to go to the emergency room of the hospital.
“I couldn’t get comfortable whatsoever,” she said. “I was constantly having to walk and I couldn’t sit down for long periods of time and my pain was coming and going. It was just severe pain.”
When she arrived at the hospital, Anglin said a doctor asked her if there was any chance she could be pregnant.
She said no, and the doctor prescribed a muscle relaxant, she recalled.
As Anglin prepared to leave the hospital, however, she said a nurse asked her to wait while they ran a urine test. Then came the shocking news.
“She said, ‘You’re positive,’” she said. “And I said, ‘Positive for what?’ She was like, ‘You’re pregnant.’”
Anglin said she and her fiancé looked at each other “dumbfounded.”
When the doctor returned, Anglin underwent an ultrasound, but they still couldn’t find any sign of a baby. It wasn’t until hospital staff checked her cervix and found that she was five centimetres dilated that Anglin realized she was full-term and in labour.
“I was so shocked,” she said. “I had so many mixed emotions.”
Less than two hours later, Anglin said she started pushing. At 4:52 a.m. Tuesday, Anglin gave birth to a healthy baby girl weighing eight pounds and 14 ounces.
She and fiancé Phillips named the surprise baby Nevaeh Charlie Phillips.
“She’s a miracle. She’s nothing but heaven,” she said. “That’s why we named her Nevaeh because it’s heaven spelled backwards.”
Although Nevaeh was a shock, Anglin said she and her fiancé are adjusting, as is Nevaeh.
The newborn had to spend several days in the NICU after suffering meconium aspiration syndrome, a condition in which the baby inhales a mixture of fecal matter and amniotic fluid into the lungs around the time of delivery.
But doctors expect Nevaeh to be discharged from hospital soon, she said.
Anglin said the hospital staff are shocked by her story. Her nurse said he has worked at the hospital for six years and has never seen a similar case.
Although she hadn’t had a period since December, Anglin said she often experiences bouts of missing her period when she’s under stress and didn’t think anything of it. She also didn’t experience any symptoms of morning sickness, mood swings or food cravings.
“I had no symptoms whatsoever,” she said. “I was still wearing the same clothes. I was wearing everything the same, eating the same, everything.”
For grandmother Diana James, who saw her daughter almost every day during the past nine months, she said the pregnancy was a big shock.
“An eight pound 14 ounce shock,” she said with a laugh. “But so far it’s wonderful.”
James said she only once suspected that her daughter could be pregnant about three or four weeks ago.
“There was a certain way that she was standing, and I said, ‘You look pregnant!’” James recalled, adding her daughter just laughed it off and said, “Well, I’m not!”
When Anglin called her mom from the hospital Monday night to deliver the news that she was in labour, James said she thought her daughter was joking.
“My daughter’s a clown,” she said. “She likes goof with me all the time.”
But James said Nevaeh’s arrival has been a “wonderful surprise” and her daughter has adjusted remarkably well to her sudden entrance into motherhood.
“She’s doing awesome,” James said. “She’s a natural mama.”
