Sammy Evans, 41, had no idea she was pregnant until she was already in labour, hours away from giving birth. She went to hospital with what she believed were period pains or a possible UTI, only to be told she was nine months pregnant and in labour.
Evans and her partner Triston McKend, who are already parents to a nine-year-old boy, welcomed baby Noah into the world, completely unaware that he was on his way. Evans shared her story on This Morning with presenters Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley.
Symptoms mistaken for other conditions
"I'd been feeling a bit odd," Evans explained. "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."
"It all came back fine, I wanted to eliminate that first. And then I thought... enough's enough, I need to go get it looked at. I explained the symptoms to the doctor, and they said, let's do some tests."
She described her symptoms to the doctor, including that she had not had her period "for a long time", though she had considered this might be entirely normal following significant weight loss. She said: "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."
Tests and diagnosis
Evans said she did notice a lump, "like a fat tyre," around her stomach, but assumed it was connected to her weight loss and "didn't think anything of that". Doctors carried out a UTI test and a pregnancy test, yet the pregnancy test returned a negative result, 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 were unable to reach a diagnosis, sending Evans home to take another pregnancy test, which did return a positive result. At the time, she didn't give it much thought, and intended to wait for a further pregnancy scan before taking it seriously.
She took an antibiotic for her UTI and continued with her day as normal, but was left in severe pain in the middle of the night. Initially believing it to be period pains, Evans admitted: "It progressed and got worse."
Discovery in hospital
She rushed to hospital with her dad and was confirmed to be pregnant. In that moment, however, Evans feared she was losing the baby. Having previously delivered her first son via emergency C-section following induced labour, she had never experienced what labour pains actually felt like.
Following another scan, Evans was told just 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 had texted her partner Triston that she was pregnant, while he was away from their Bournemouth home, working in London, and he told her to keep him updated, unaware of how far along she was. The couple hadn't intended to have more children, already sharing a nine-year-old son and Triston's 16-year-old daughter.
Aftermath and reaction
Evans went on to explain how the shock of delivering a baby while being unknowingly pregnant became a secondary concern to the agony she was enduring at the time. "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.
She added that those around her have been left "shocked" by the account, and "can't fathom" the fact she had been completely unaware. Evans's friends are now organising a baby shower for her following Noah's arrival.
This Morning airs weekdays from 10am on ITV1 and ITVX.
