Pregnancy by Surprise

Cryptic pregnancies, where a woman is unaware she is pregnant until late on, or as in Bryony Mills-Evans case, when in labor, are described as rare, but not exceptionally rare, by midwifery professor Helen Cheyne. There are about 325 of these surprise births in the UK every year, according to a study. These instances are often attributed to a lack of awareness or understanding of the signs and symptoms of pregnancy. Bryony, a 23-year-old beautician, was unaware she was pregnant until she gave birth to her 6lb 14 oz baby girl, Willow, at her workplace in Newtown, Powys. She had been experiencing menstrual cramps, but thought they were just another month’s period. “I had tight leggings on so I went on the beauty bed in the back to take them down because I thought that might ease the pain,” Bryony recalled. “Within 10 minutes of lying there, her head had come out. I thought I’d just gone to the toilet, looked down and saw her head.”
The situation escalated quickly, and Bryony found herself in labor. “I didn’t really know what to do. My phone had died and was in another room, so I just lay on the bed for a bit,” she said. “After a while, I noticed her umbilical cord had started going white. I had eyebrow scissors next to me, not that I know anything about babies, but I cut that with them and wrapped her up in loads of towels.”
Bryony’s reaction was a mix of shock, confusion, and panic. “I didn’t know that your placenta has to come out. I think maybe I freaked more with that because I thought it was another baby,” she said. After calling 999, Bryony was sent to the hospital, where she gave birth to her baby girl. Her mother was by her side, and she was able to take a photo of the baby before leaving the hospital. The experience was traumatic, but Bryony has since come to terms with it. “I was definitely freaked out because I was only 23 and didn’t think I ever wanted any kids,” she said.

“It was a shock. Everyone always says to me ‘you must have been petrified’,” Bryony said. “I don’t really remember being petrified, it’s just one of those moments where you just get on with it because you don’t really have another choice.”

Bryony said that she had none of the tell-tale symptoms of pregnancy, including a baby bump. “When people ask ‘how could you not know?’ I always say ‘if you have a period monthly…why are you checking that you’re pregnant?’ ” she said. She also revealed that she went on several trips and activities during her pregnancy, including a trip to Alton Towers theme park and a music festival. “Remarkably, she said she was told that her daughter Willow could have been around two weeks overdue due to her ‘wrinkly old man’ appearance,” Bryony said.

Definition:

A cryptic pregnancy is a pregnancy where a woman is unaware she is pregnant until late on, or as in Bryony’s case, when in labor.

Symptoms:

No specific symptoms are recognized for cryptic pregnancies, and they are often attributed to a lack of awareness or understanding of the signs and symptoms of pregnancy.

Prevalence:

According to a study, there are about 325 of these surprise births in the UK every year.

Professor Helen Cheyne, a midwifery professor at the University of Stirling, explained that cryptic pregnancies are one of the “rare, but not exceptionally rare” phenomena in midwifery.
“It’s actually one of these rather ill-understood phenomena,” she said. “I think it’s very difficult for people to understand – how could a woman not know that she was pregnant?”
Cheyne explained that historically, women relied on more subtle signs that indicated they were expecting, such as feeling the baby move, which typically doesn’t happen for first-time mothers until about 20 weeks. “There is no medical definition of a cryptic pregnancy,” she said. “Most of my midwife colleagues had either come across it, or had heard of it, around their clinical practice.”
While working as a midwife in the early 1980s, Cheyne met a woman in her mid-40s with other children who claimed to have had a cryptic pregnancy. “She assumed she was entering the menopause, which was why she felt she was putting on weight and had stopped having periods,” Cheyne said. Cheyne also noted that few pregnancies were cryptic, and it is not something that women need to be concerned about. Six months after becoming parents, the pair rekindled their romance. Four years after Willow’s birth, the couple welcomed their second child, Parker Mills-Evans. Bryony said that her second pregnancy felt completely different. “Everything I had with Parker, I didn’t have with [Willow],” she said. Willow is now five, and Bryony said that she cannot imagine life without the baby she did not know she was having. “I decided to recently share my story as I’ve realised there is such a lack of support and knowledge around cryptic pregnancies,” she said.