Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Surprise


A 23 yo female arrived through triage with a chief complaint of "vaginal bleeding and lower abdominal pain."

The paramedic put the patient in a wheel chair and placed her into one the examination rooms. After he helped her into bed, she started to scream and breath faster. He looked down towards her vagina and noticed a baby's head coming out!

The patient insisted that her last period was two weeks ago and that it was "impossible that she was pregnant." Her belly really didn't look that big and pregnant either.

I heard on the speakers... "Doc Sensitive to room 29 immediately."

When I arrived to the room the baby was crowning. I pushed down and up... and out pops a full term infant! The mother was in shock. She swears she had no idea she was pregnant, nor did she know who the baby's father was.

After looking through the records the next day, I learned she named the baby girl "Surprise."

Doc Sensitive

11 comments:

io-n Dushu Tau! said...

life does have a sense of humor.
there are these kind of people which are unaware that they are pregnant untill they "pop-out" a healthy child, and there are those which try all their life to get one and all they do is fail.
Indeed, a surprise.

SuFu PhD said...

I see a name change hearing in that child's future.

NPO said...

Too stupid to realize she is pregnant and giving birth. That kid is in trouble.

arzt4empfaenger said...

I hope she'll grow up and mature enough to be a good mom. You must be pretty naive to "miss" a pregnancy, but yeah... at least she didn't have to deal with fear of giving birth... because when she realized, it was all over already, hah!

So, did she think thise occasional kicks were from the shrimps she ate? ;-) Although some say you could mistake it for gas. (I can't confirm that, though).

Happy that the baby was at least in good shape! You always think these stories can't happen, but they do.

R. said...

I actually have a good (and very intelligent) friend who had no idea she was pregnant. She had a normal period, no weight gain and the baby had settled into her back instead of out front. Because she was playing college volleyball at the time, the pregnancy aches and pains were just pushed aside as soreness from that.
Then one day she thought she was dying from the stomach pains, went into the ER and had her baby alone in the bathroom waiting to be helped. She named her daughter Hope :)

amyinbc said...

Here's to hoping she comes up with a better name for her daughter.


My SIL went 6 months before realizing she was pregnant. 'Periods' came and went, she gained a bit more weight but had NO idea when she was pregnant.

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure how you wouldn't know you were pregnant. My stomach would jump around at all hours of the day and night. I could count the childs toes, for crying out loud.

I know each pregnancy is different, but you'd have to have had some serious concerns about what was going on in your body.

It's not just missed periods and weight gain. And those kicks - aren't just in your stomach - especially later in the pregnancy. A lot of denial and naivete, I would think.

RehabRN said...

Doc:

By chance was this woman overweight with irregular periods?

It seems like lots of people fit this profile. They don't know they're pregnant because they have no idea what "normal" periods are supposed to be like.

BTW I tried forever before I had Bubba. I was just getting ready to go to the OB for the "over the hill" evaluation, when I got to call instead and say, "Hey, I missed my period xx days ago. Can you check me?"

Anonymous said...

Just be glad she didn't name the poor child "Nopree'Natell Caire" or
"Precipita D'Livreigh".

Pattie, RN

ps...or worse, "SheeTay Lukke"

ERP said...

That's special.
And here I thought this was going to be another Lap Band post.

Shash said...

A co-worker's sister had a surprise baby this way. The story is too long to tell here but she did not know until one day when she was in great pain and asked her mother to come over. She gave breech birth on the bathroom floor.

Mom and baby were both in good health. The surprise daughter is now in graduate school.