The Mom Who Didn’t Know She Was Pregnant Until She Was in Labor

“A wave of pain hit me so badly that I catapulted up from the recliner, landing with my back arched like a cat ready to attack.”

Because no two paths to parenthood look the same, “How I Got This Baby” is a series that invites parents to share their stories.

In April 2022, Amanda, 36, fled her boyfriend’s house, and vowed to herself that she’d never return. Just hours earlier, John had asked her to stay the night. She declined. First he tried guilt-tripping her into changing her mind; then he grew angry when she didn’t. “I guess you don’t love me as much as you say you do,” he barked. Seconds later, he threw a punch. Amanda ducked just in time.

John’s behavior had been troubling Amanda for about eight months, but the hole he left in the wall above her head jolted her into seeing just how toxic their relationship had become. “It started out as very subtle mental and emotional manipulation that you didn’t really catch on to at first,” she explains. “I was asking myself if I was blowing these situations out of proportion or if I was making the situation worse: What did I say to get him mad? How did I react?” She started to doubt herself and became isolated from her friends.

After Amanda drove the hour back to her house, she blocked John’s number, email, and all of his social-media accounts. She also scrubbed all of their mutual friends from her followers; the pair had dated in college and reconnected ten years later when they both found themselves in Kentucky again, so they knew quite a few people in common. 

She also decided then and there that she needed a break from dating to feel like herself again. “I told myself, You’ve gone through some trauma, even if it doesn’t feel like it. You don’t need to be dating anybody,” she says.

Her work kept her too busy to date, anyway. Amanda had worked in food service for 20 years, the last 12 of which were spent in management positions at restaurants and bakeries. The work was sometimes grueling: 60- to 70-hour workweeks were typical, and it wasn’t unusual to spend a day lifting 75-pound cases of rib eyes. But she was used to it.

One day, about nine months after she left John, Amanda got home from work and noticed a nagging pain in her back. She had sciatica, but this wasn’t that. Amanda recounts what happened next. 

On the first pangs of pain

It was a Wednesday and I had just finished a 13-hour shift at work, lifting 60-pound cases of canned apples and 50-pound bags of sugar. When I got home, my lower back hurt. You idiot, you twisted wrong lifting a bag and hurt your back, I told myself. I made a makeshift heating pad and put it on my back to help with the pain. I was able to get a little bit of sleep that night.

But when I woke up Thursday morning, I felt sick to my stomach and the back pain hadn’t eased up. Even though I wasn’t feeling great and it was my day off, I went down to the store to do some general-management stuff. Later that day, I was scheduled to do a radio broadcast for my store to promote our Thanksgiving sales. All that morning, my back hurt more and more. I also began to feel more nauseated and lightheaded as the day wore on.

I got home early that evening and the pain increased. At this point, I started going to the bathroom to pee more frequently, but I didn’t actually have to go — it just felt like I needed to. It dawned on me that I might have dehydrated myself to the point of getting a bad kidney infection. I took some AZO, which is for UTI relief, thinking that it might help.

But the pain in my lower back started to intensify and was coming in waves now. I started to think that it wasn’t a kidney infection and that maybe I had kidney stones.  I knew I had to go to the hospital, but the pain was so bad that I couldn’t drive.

Around midnight, I posted on Facebook asking if someone could take me to the hospital. I didn’t want to text or call anybody and wake them up. No one responded to the post.

On calling 911

At 4 a.m. on Friday, after not sleeping a wink all night, I had a wave of pain hit me so badly that I catapulted up from the recliner I was in, landing with my fists on the coffee table, back arched like a cat ready to attack. I screamed out in pain.

I emailed my bosses and told them that I wouldn’t be in for work because I was going to the hospital for kidney stones, and I needed someone to cover my shift. I called for an ambulance and told the dispatch operator that I live in a third-floor apartment. I said that I couldn’t drive because of how much pain I was in, but I didn’t need the paramedics to bring a stretcher up to take me downstairs. I told them I could walk.

By the time the paramedics arrived, I was almost in tears but doing deep breathing exercises to try to keep myself calm and lower my heart rate. The three of them walked me down the stairs. We paused every few minutes as the waves of pain hit me.

I think one of the young paramedics thought I might have been drug seeking at that point, which is a big issue here in Kentucky. He told me, “We’re not going to give you anything for the pain. You know that, right?” I almost bit his head off. “Look, I just need to go to the hospital. I don’t care what you guys do, just get me there safely,” I told him.

On learning she was pregnant

The paramedics got me to the hospital at about 4:45 a.m. Friday morning. The doctor had me pee in a cup and took some blood. When he came back, he said, “Congratulations, you’re pregnant.”

At first, I outright argued with him. I told him I had broken up with my ex in April and hadn’t been with anyone since then. Once I explained to the doctor how there was no way that I could be pregnant, he did the math literally on his fingers, counting back from November to the beginning of the year. Then his face turned white, and he ran from the room calling for an ultrasound machine.

Once they got everything set up, we instantly heard the fetal heartbeat. But it took about two minutes to see the baby because he was kind of tucked up under my rib cage, not down low between the pelvic bones where he should have been. The ER nurse had been timing when I was clenching my fists, and she said, “Your contractions are about two minutes apart.”

On reacting to the news

I’m sitting there like, What? This is a bad dream. This is a nightmare. I had never wanted to have children. I had always believed I was too selfish to be the type of person who could be a mother because I felt that my life was for me, not for anybody else.

I said to the ER nurse, “This is crazy. There’s no way someone can go through a whole pregnancy and not know that they’re pregnant.” She said, “You’d be surprised. We had a lady come in today with pain in her stomach thinking it was appendicitis. She was 26 weeks pregnant and didn’t know it.”

It was just absolute confusion. I was lying there, thinking I’m going to wake up and it’s going to be the wildest, most realistic dream that I’ve ever had.

On coming to terms with being in labor

The doctor said that he needed to do a physical exam to see how dilated I was and began examining my cervix. In a daze, I looked at this nurse who was the calmest, sweetest person imaginable and said, “What did he do to me? I feel like I’m leaking.” That prompted the best belly laugh ever from her and she responds, “Honey, he’s about to rupture your waters. You’re in labor.”

I was 8.5 centimeters dilated at that point and still in complete shock. Next, they checked my blood pressure, and it was through the roof, probably because I’d been in labor for almost 40 hours and because of the situation that I now found myself in.

The doctor said they were going to put me on a magnesium drip to get my blood pressure down. But they accidentally gave me too much magnesium and it stopped my labor. My contractions went from two minutes apart to 20 minutes apart.

On calling her mom and grandmother

They transferred me down to labor and delivery. As they were walking me down there, the nurse was telling me that I needed to make a phone call and tell someone in my family what was going on — that I didn’t need to go through this by myself. My family was 200 miles away.

I put the call on speaker so that I could continue to grip the bed rails during the contractions. I tried calling my mom’s cell phone, but she didn’t answer. My mother had moved out of state to help care for my grandmother and my nephew, so I called my grandmother’s landline and she answered. I said, “Nonna, I need you to go wake up my mother.” She asked, “Are you okay? Did you go to the hospital? Is it kidney stones?” I said, “Nonna, I just need you to go wake up my mother.” Nonna said, “I need you to tell me what’s going on so that I can make sure she wakes up.”

I kept trying to avoid answering because, how could I disappoint my 86-year-old grandmother with the news that her oldest granddaughter was having a child outside of marriage? But my Nonna is more stubborn than I am, so I finally burst out in a rush, “Because I’m in the hospital, I’m in labor, and I didn’t know I was pregnant!”

She spoke as one would to someone holding a bomb, calmly and quietly. “Okay, I’m going to go wake up your mother,” she said. I could hear her talking to my mom in her “teacher voice” that I heard often growing up. “You really need to wake up for this phone call. It’s your oldest daughter,” she said.

My mom drowsily answered the phone, “Are you okay? Is it kidney stones?” I started crying. I sounded like a small child who had a bad dream and woke their parents up, “Momma, I’m so sorry. I’m having a baby.”

There was such a long pause. I wasn’t sure she’d heard me. Then all of a sudden, she said, “Well, how the fuck did that happen? I just saw you!” My sarcastic nature took over, and I popped off with, “Well, you’ve had three kids, you know how this shit works!” At this point, the nurse and doctor were dying laughing hearing this entire exchange.

My mom had seen me a month earlier, so she was just as confused as I was. She said, “You didn’t look pregnant. You didn’t have the pregnant walk like your hips hurt.”

Then the nurse got on the phone and told my mom and my grandmother that if I was okay with it, I could keep them on the phone so that they could sort of be there with me through the whole thing.

On letting friends and co-workers know what was happening

At some point in all of this, I got a text from the director of operations at work asking me if I had gone to the hospital and if everything was okay. I called him back around 7:45 a.m. I bungled it when I first told him. I said, “Well, I’m in the hospital, and I’m pregnant.” And he was like, “Oh, congratulations. That’s awesome. When are you due?” And I said, “No, I’m sorry. I said that wrong. I’m in the hospital, and I’m in labor.” Then he freaked out. He put me on with the owner of the store, then I told him the story. He was freaking out because we were two weeks away from our busiest season.

Around 10 a.m., Sarah, one of my oldest friends since freshman year of high school, sent me a text asking me if I was okay. She had just seen my Facebook post. I called her and told her what was going on, and she said she would come to the hospital straight away.

Still not totally comprehending the situation that I was in, I realized that I didn’t have a delivery driver to take our store’s product to the four restaurants that we serve that morning. So I called the general manager of the commissary kitchen that helps deliver food to all the locations, and I told him that I needed a driver because I wouldn’t be at the store today. He asked me, “Why aren’t you at the store?” And I said, “I’m having a baby.” And he was like, “Why are you on the phone with me?”

On preparing to deliver

I remember that four nurses from the NICU came into the labor and delivery room. The doctors had estimated that the baby was between 32 and 36 weeks gestation. They were anticipating a somewhat premature baby.

At that point, they were able to get better imaging and saw that the baby was coming out face up. The nurses helped rock me back and forth in an attempt to get the baby to be face down instead. They were not letting on about how serious the situation was. Everybody in the delivery room was completely calm. I had just gotten an epidural when my friend Sarah arrived. She started talking to my mom over the phone, just as the nurses were telling me that my contractions had returned. I felt absolutely nothing from the mid-chest down because of the epidural. I was slapping my legs and I couldn’t even feel my hands on my legs.

At one point, I looked over at Sarah. She knew that I didn’t want children. And I said, “Sarah, what if I can’t connect to this baby? What am I going to do if I just don’t have that maternal instinct? How am I going to get through this?” And then Sarah told me, “You’ve never not been able to do anything. You’ll be able to do this, too.”

On meeting her son

At 11:56 a.m., the doctor placed a six-pound, three-ounce, 20-inch-long baby on my chest.

Once they put the baby on me, it was a complete game changer. I remember feeling him, his head right up against my neck. They told me he was a little boy, and I just said, “Oh, my sweet boy,” and started crying.

My mother and grandmother knew how I felt about having children. They had stopped asking long ago when I was going to give them grandbabies and great-grandbabies, and they were comfortable with the idea of me not having a child. My mom told me she was waiting to hear the tone of my voice change — she said she heard it right away with those first words I spoke after he was born.

Then, the nurse asked me what I was going to name him. A name just popped out of my mouth. I hadn’t given it any thought, obviously. I named him after my grandfather and one of my great-uncles. Both of these men were and are incredibly influential in my life. And that was how James made his debut into the world.

He was moved to the NICU, but they only kept him for one hour. The doctors said that he looked as developed as a baby over 36 weeks, so they think he was full term. In situations like that, they are required to do drug testing to make sure that everything is okay, and he was fine. The doctors kept me on a magnesium drip for 24 hours after he was born because my blood pressure wouldn’t come down and they were afraid that I could potentially have a stroke. James and I were both discharged on Monday.

On bringing her baby home

My best friend is a mom, and she still had her daughter’s car seat that she had outgrown along with a lot of newborn gear. She brought the car seat to the hospital so I could get James home. I had no baby stuff whatsoever.

My mom drove to the hospital to see James and take us home. When we got to my apartment, I opened the door to see a bunch of my coworkers — it was a very close-knit work community — there to surprise me with Boppies and baby clothes.

On outfitting her nursery

I wound up having about ten baby showers dropped on me over the course of three or four days. One older couple who I work with brought me five 30-pound bags of baby clothes and a crib that they put together. They also brought over a huge dinner that I could put in the freezer.

Even back in my hometown, my mom’s friends were getting strollers, pack-and-plays, clothing, and stuff like that together for me. My mother and grandmother got a lot of stuff, too.

One of my other good friends gathered a bunch of her mom friends to buy me a rocker glider for the nursery, a little swing, a baby bath, and a whole bunch of stuff. I didn’t need to buy James anything — including diapers — until he was about 5 or 6 months old. It was very overwhelming, but it was an amazing and beautiful display of community.

On figuring out how she missed the fact that she was pregnant

I did a lot of research on cryptic pregnancies, the official term for when you don’t know you’re pregnant. I think the numbers are 1 in 475 make it to 20 weeks pregnant before finding out, and then 1 in 2,500 women get to full-term before they know they’re pregnant. I felt stupid. I’m not the most intelligent person on the planet by any means, but I’m also no slouch when it comes to knowing things.

I never missed a monthly cycle. My period came like clockwork between the first and third of every month. But it turns out they weren’t technically menstrual cycles. I found out that I had fibroid tumors that were causing the bleeding. Plus, my period has always been minimal — I normally bleed for two to three days max, and oftentimes panty liners are  enough protection. I’ve never experienced cramping, bloating, or food cravings.

My OB/GYN also thinks that I had an anterior placenta, which means the placenta grows in front of the uterine wall and becomes a buffer between the belly and the baby. That’s why I never felt the baby moving when I was pregnant.

I also never had a baby bump and my stomach never really got hard either. I attribute that to having large hips and being heavier. I’ve always had issues with my weight. That year, I lost 15 pounds going into the summer and I gained 15 pounds in the fall. Working in food service, your eating habits are as far from normal as one can possibly get.

Honestly, looking back on that year and how I sometimes worked two jobs at the same time, it doesn’t surprise me that I thought I had normal work exhaustion. I had heartburn and I was tired all the time, but that’s essentially the life of a restaurant manager.

After talking with my friends who are mothers and hearing what they experienced, I must have had the world’s easiest pregnancy. I didn’t experience any of the discomfort they did. It was absolutely wild.

On fearing that she had unknowingly harmed the baby during pregnancy

My biggest concern was that I had been smoking throughout the entire pregnancy, and I was also a happy little stoner. I told the doctors everything. When I gave birth, it had probably been two or three months since I had smoked any pot, but it could have still been in my system.

Also, at least once a week during my pregnancy, I was eating sushi and bagels and lox. I was eating cold-cut sandwiches and drinking soda. I had at least four or five cups of coffee a day. If I didn’t have any coffee, I’d have a couple of energy drinks. I wasn’t big on alcohol, but a month before James was born, I was at a dinner party and had some wine. And a month before that, I went out for a girls’ night where there were half-price bottles of wine at dinner. I had been doing everything that you were not supposed to do and consuming everything you weren’t supposed to eat or drink.

I beat myself up about it after he was born. My close friends said things like, “Look, your body knew to naturally protect him” and “Before doctors warned women not to do all of this stuff, women were doing it for years.” I was like, “Well, I’m glad that’s comforting to you guys, but it’s not comforting to me.”

I still carry around a lot of guilt. I have had a hard time letting go of not knowing. But I also embraced the surprise. Along with his photo, name, and birth date, I titled my son’s birth announcement, “Hide-and-Seek Champ ’22.”

On the first few weeks and months with James

Not really understanding the situation that I was in, I told my boss that I thought I could be back at work for the shop’s busy season two weeks after James was born. But he understood how unrealistic that was. He told me, “You’re going to need some time off.”

I didn’t qualify for FMLA or Short-Term Disability because I hadn’t been working in my job long enough. For a minute, I thought I could get James into day care around December and go back to work. Then I found out that no day care would accept a child until they’re vaccinated, and kids don’t usually get vaccinated until they’re more than a month old.

My family really rallied around me. My mother and my grandmother were adamant that I come back and stay at their house for three-and-a-half months to adjust to being a mom before going back to work.

I went to stay with my grandmother and my mom for two-and-a-half weeks, and they helped me adjust to my new normal. Then I thought that I should probably try to take care of the baby on my own, since I’m going to be doing this solo. Plus, I wanted to get all his stuff set up. So I brought him back to my place.

The first week alone was rough. He was inconsolable. I finally figured out that he had gas. There were a lot of frantic phone calls made to my mother and my grandmother, asking: Am I doing this right? What’s going on? I tried to read books, but I was so tired from being up every three hours feeding him. I gave up on reading and now I just ask my mom, and our pediatrician, and my friends who have kids when I have questions.

On contemplating whether to tell James’s father

I decided not to tell John that he’s the father of my baby. He has attempted to physically harm me. That’s the main reason he does not know that he has a child. I don’t want to play Russian roulette with my child’s safety. There have been plenty of people who have said things along the lines of “He might change for his kid.” But I’m not going to base the well-being of my child on a “might.”

On managing her mental health

I have bipolar disorder and ADHD. In 2022 when I was pregnant with James, I never consistently had insurance, so I wasn’t on mood stabilizers, anti-psychosis medication, or Concerta for ADHD. And that might have been a good thing. Looking back, I didn’t have wild mood swings from being off my medication. I just assumed it was because I was getting older, I was learning how to control what I was going through, and I was too tired to want to get emotionally wound up.

After I gave birth, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. I fully expected to have a full-on meltdown. I didn’t get to go through nine months of acknowledging that my life would be completely transformed soon. I went from thinking I had kidney stones to being a mother. I went from being the happy-go-lucky party girl to being a mom.

But so far I have been very no-nonsense. That’s been my approach with my son. It would be nice to feel my feelings and piss and moan about the fact that I can’t do all the things that I used to do, but it’s not going to change anything. So what’s the point of getting upset about it?

That’s probably part of the reason I haven’t had that high-speed come-apart moment that almost everybody was anticipating me having. I have been like, Well, it is what it is. To this day though, I keep thinking I might have a breakdown. I mean, there are times I’ll go into the shower and I’m like, Okay, you need to cry. I’ll give myself two minutes to cry it out.

On her life today

James is now 20 months old and has been crushing his milestones, which is reassuring. He’s grown almost an inch every month since he’s been born. I often remind myself: Well, he’s still alive and doing really well, so you’re doing something right.

About two months ago, I moved back in with my grandmother and my mom. My grandmother asked me to come. She told me, “Take some time, and help me paint and power-wash my house. Just enjoy time with us for a little bit.”

I’m close to my family and being 200 miles away felt like I was depriving James of cousins who could be like siblings since I don’t plan on having another child. I had an IUD put in to make sure there are no more accidents.

I also wanted a slower paced life and more time with James. My mom and grandmother live in a small country town where he can walk out into the front yard and play in the dirt.

I haven’t lived with my family in 20 years, so it’s been a big adjustment. But I am content to be my grandmother’s handy person. I’m working on fixing things around the house and stuff like that while I raise James. This pause is also a great opportunity to reinvent myself as far as work goes. Food service and management is all hours of the day and holidays and weekends. I’ve been looking at job postings and considering a Monday-through-Friday, 8-to-5 sort of thing. I have a take-charge personality and for me to acknowledge that I don’t want a leadership role has been a kind of challenge. But it’s been a good challenge.

I’m not going to rule out dating, but I’m also not actively seeking it out. It would be nice for James to see me in a healthy relationship and for him to have a healthy male role model who’s not an uncle or a great-uncle. But my track record with relationships has not been great, and I don’t want to parade people in and out of his life. Right now, I cannot imagine putting as much effort into a romantic relationship as I put into my relationship with my son. So I’m perfectly content being that single mama who is hell-bent on raising a healthy, happy, well-loved, and well-adjusted child.

On coming to fully embrace motherhood

There have been plenty of moments — from his little giggle to his smile — when I’m just like, I actually love being a mom. I love having a child. This is wonderful watching him grow and learn. And James does this thing now that he’s walking: He squats down to the point where his butt almost touches the ground, but not quite. And he cocks his head to the side, and he just stares at something until he thinks he’s got it figured out, and then he tries to take it apart, or he tries to build it, or he tries to move it. The first time he said, “Momma” — I never truly understood what somebody meant when they said they melted. But when I heard “Momma” come out of his mouth, I was a puddle on the floor.

I think I’m a decent parent. I realize it’s my responsibility to teach him how to be a person. He’s only been here for 20 months. I’ve been here for 38 years, so I’ve got a better handle on life. I’m learning to be more patient and am offering him more grace than I’ve ever offered myself.

I get why some people don’t want to be parents. I lived that life for 36 years. But I’m glad that I was put in a position where I had to. It’s been absolutely amazing. If we’re going to get philosophical, with everybody having a purpose for being born, I think my child’s purpose, at least in my life, is to teach me the truest definition of everlasting love — of love in its purest form.

The names of all subjects have been changed to protect their identities.