Sammy Evans, 41, was hours away from giving birth without knowing she was pregnant. She attended hospital with what she believed were menstrual cramps or a potential UTI and was told she was nine months pregnant and in labour. She has shared her story on This Morning with presenters Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley.
Unexpected Labour After UTI Symptoms
Sammy and her partner Triston McKend, already parents to a nine-year-old son, welcomed baby Noah, completely unaware he was coming. Sammy explained her symptoms: "I'd been feeling a bit odd. I felt just a bit heavy, a bit dry, and a bit sad down there. It'd been like that for a while and I wasn't sure what it was, so I had a smear test in August, I would have been eight months pregnant then but didn't know obviously."
The smear test came back fine. She described her symptoms to the GP, mentioning she had not had her period "for a long time" but assumed this might be typical following weight loss. "I'd lost 10st in total, and with weight loss comes sometimes missing periods or your periods stop for a while. I'd Googled it and thought it was normal for periods to stop, so ignored that," she said. She also noticed a lump "like a fat tyre" around her stomach but attributed it to her weight loss journey.
Negative Test and Faint Line
Medical staff carried out a UTI test and a pregnancy test, but the pregnancy test returned negative, showing only a faint line that should have been considerably stronger at her stage of pregnancy. They also investigated the possibility of a hernia but could not identify the cause, sending Sammy home to carry out another pregnancy test, which did return positive. She took an antibiotic for her UTI and continued her routine, but found herself in agony in the middle of the night.
Initially, she put it down to period pains, but Sammy admitted: "It progressed and got worse." She rushed to hospital with her dad, where she was confirmed to be pregnant. In that moment, she was terrified she was losing the baby.
Shock of Birth and Support
Having previously delivered her first son via emergency C-section with induced labour, she had never experienced labour pains. Following another scan, Sammy began to grasp how far along her pregnancy was. "I was crying in pain, and they said, 'You're in labour,' and I said, 'No, I can't be'," she recalled.
She messaged her partner Triston to tell him she was pregnant while he was away from their Bournemouth home on a work trip in London. The couple had not anticipated having more children, already sharing a nine-year-old son together alongside Triston's 16-year-old daughter. Sammy explained how the shock of unexpectedly delivering a baby took a back seat to the agony she was enduring. "When I gave birth to him, I was still very much in pain, I had stitches and things like that, I was like, 'Oh gosh I've had a baby,' but I'm still in horrendous pain, so I didn't get a chance immediately to be like, 'Oh I've had a baby'," she said.
Those around her have been left "shocked" by her story and "can't fathom" that she had no idea she was expecting. Sammy's close friends are now planning a baby shower following the arrival of little Noah. This Morning airs weekdays from 10am on ITV1 and ITVX.
