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A mom has spoken of her shock after she gave birth to a baby at 35 weeks despite having no idea she was pregnant.
Abby Vollet, 22, from Missouri says she did not have any signs of pregnancy or weight gain ahead of the birth, which took place in March, 2021.
However, one day she started to experience stomach cramps which got progressively worse. When Vollet was unable to move due to the pain, her mom took her to the hospital.
"I had an ultrasound and the doctors told me I was pregnant and I was fully dilated," Vollet told Caters News Agency. "I remember telling the doctor that it wasn't true. I was in total shock."
Doctors estimated that Vollet was around 20 weeks or four-and-a-half months pregnant, and they decided to carry out a C-section to deliver her baby. However, afterwards they estimated that she had been pregnant for much longer—around 35 weeks, or eight months.
Vollet said that the doctors thought the baby had been behind her ribs, which is why she did not feel any kicks or have a bump.
"I was even getting my period the whole time and I comfortably fit into all of my size medium clothes the whole way through," Vollet said.
At first the stunned new mom was unsure about her situation and said that she had not initially planned for children. But now she says she absolutely loves her baby daughter.
Vollet described her daughter, named Khalani, as "my miracle child".
Symptomless pregnancies are sometimes referred to as 'cryptic pregnancies' and though they're not common they're also not as unusual as one might think. One report published in British Medical Journal Case Reports in 2014 noted that figures up to that year suggested that the prevalence of such pregnancies may be one in every 475 births.
"It's rare, but it's not that rare," Helen Cheyne, a professor of midwifery at the University of Stirling in Scotland, told The Guardian newspaper in 2019.
Pregnancies such as this may carry risks due to a lack of medical care beforehand including poor nutrition or an unattended delivery.
Some cases of cryptic pregnancies make headlines. In 2021, a mother of eight became a mother of ten after giving birth to twins whom she did not realise she was pregnant with until she was more than six months into her pregnancy.
That same year a woman gave birth on a plane despite not knowing she was pregnant. A TikTok video documenting the flight went viral with millions of views.
