Klara Dollan, then 22, woke up at 4am on the day she was due to start a new job, believing her agonising stomach cramps were her period returning with a vengeance. She took paracetamol and commuted into central London. Hours later, after being sent home sick, she gave birth alone in her bathroom in north-west London. Her neighbour heard her screams and called an ambulance. Dollan was taken to the Royal Free Hospital, where she cradled a healthy full-term baby girl, Amelia, now three.
Dollan had been taking the pill without a break for over six months and stopped two weeks before. She had experienced no symptoms: no nausea, no cravings, no visible bump. ‘There was nothing showing,’ she said. The first time the thought of pregnancy crossed her mind was when she saw the baby’s head emerging. She and her family were in shock.
Such cases are known as cryptic pregnancies, where a woman carries a baby to term without knowing she is pregnant. A 2002 study in the British Medical Journal estimated this occurs in one in every 2,500 pregnancies, suggesting about 320 cases annually in the UK. Professor Helen Cheyne of the University of Stirling says: ‘This is not a particularly unusual phenomenon. It’s rare – but it’s not that rare.’
Last week, a Bangladeshi woman gave birth to a healthy boy, only to discover nearly a month later she was still carrying twins in a second uterus. They were also born healthy. While extreme, the phenomenon is more common than assumed, affecting women of all sizes and backgrounds. Cheyne recalls a 1980s case of a woman with teenage children who attributed weight gain and irregular periods to age, only to discover she was in labour.
