Amanda Prentice, Mom Who Didn't Know She Was Pregnant Gives Birth

Tennessee couple Amanda and Billy Prentice tried to conceive for four years. On April 25th, a doctor told them they'd been successful and were finally going to be parents. Only five hours after finding this out, Amanda gave birth to their baby girl, according to WSMV.

The news outlet reports that Amanda started having seizures a few days before she delivered. Billy rushed her to a local hospital where she was then airlifted to Vanderbilt Hospital. The new mom was unconscious for two days. When she woke up, her doctor said she had suffered complications from her pregnancy. At that time, being pregnant was news to Amanda. She said she had not experienced any usual pregnancy symptoms at all.

"I never felt [the baby] move. I wore the same clothes that I had worn for two years," Amanda told WSMV.

However, the new mom must have been pregnant for several months. Her baby, Allie McKinley Rose, was born healthy and weighed 5 pounds and 5 ounces.

"We had talked about adopting, and now we've got our miracle baby," Bill Prentice told WSMV.

This couple's story seems to be a remarkable case, something that would only happen on "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant,," but HuffPost blogger Jena Pincott, author of "Do Chocolate Lovers Have Sweeter Babies?: The Surprising Science of Pregnancy," says it is more common than people think for women to be pregnant without knowing it.

"Among pregnant women, 1 in 450 doesn't know her status until week 20 or later (more than halfway through the pregnancy), and 1 in 2,500 is oblivious until she actually goes into labor," Pincott wrote in a blog post.

After delving into the phenomenon (called cryptic pregnancy), Pincott discovered that denial or mental illness does not necessarily explain why pregnancies go unnoticed. Some women really don't experience pregnancy symptoms, she says. Many even get their periods while being pregnant. In short, Pincott found that cryptic pregnancy is linked to a mother's stress-levels.

In Amanda's case, the only signs of pregnancy she experienced at all were swollen feet and ankles, Billy said. Despite their shocking start, both mom and baby are doing well.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story stated that another news source had originally interviewed the Prentice family. WSMV conducted the interview.

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Comments

[HayleyIsabella]

02:18 PM on 05/10/2012

Congrats on your healthy little bundle of joy. Now you may have breezed your way through pregnancy but brace yourself for the next year. Hehe! I have a 3 month old and my gosh, two days after coming home from the hospital, I felt like Hurricane Katrina hit me.

[LornaP]

11:49 AM on 05/10/2012

I simply cannot separate the mind from the body in these situations. Provided the woman is aware of what causes pregnancy and has some fundamental knowledge of the symptoms, there is no way she can go to term unknowingly. I have had four babies - one of whom escaped my radar for 14 weeks because I was told I couldn't conceive. The belief that I could not get pregnant made those symptoms meaningless. The mind has got to be engaged here.

[elan1126]

06:37 PM on 05/09/2012

"Pincott discovered that denial or mental illness does not necessarily explain why pregnancies go unnoticed."
I am convinced that mostly plain old ignorance and stupidity might explain why pregnancy goes unnoticed. How in the world do you not know you have a person growing inside you?

[Tony Twohill]

03:44 PM on 05/10/2012

I wonder if this kind of thing happens all across the board in random places in every country around the world, or if it's isolated to a small area, say, southern United States. Like Miss Tennessee in the article here. Yeah, i'm a jerk. But I'm fine with it.

[JujuSapiens]

01:37 PM on 05/09/2012

These stories always amaze me. I had every pregnancy syptom in the book. I wish I ould have breezed through it! Congrats to the momma!

[Renee Casey]

10:45 AM on 05/09/2012

She is only 30-34 years old. Whitepages.com lists it. So NO "grandma".

[yesiam11]

07:51 PM on 02/14/2013

You searched it on Whitepages???

[rg19]

03:20 AM on 05/09/2012

Along these lines, I knew someone who knew she was pregnant but didn't know she was in labor. She woke up with a back ache at 3 or 4 in the morning. But hey she was in her 9th month and had woke up plenty of times with a back ache. Her husband had got to bed late so she let him sleep. Figured if she moved around a bit she would feel better. So she did some laundry, watched TV, drank some tea. Never had one cotraction. Just a dull ache that gradurally got worse. Finally at 8 she called the doctor's office. After a few questions the nurse said get to the hospital now. A few minutes later they were at the hospital. The hospital wanted her to sit in a wheel chair to be checked in. She couldn't the baby's head was coming out. You can imagine the comotion. But she and the baby were fine. The crasiest part of this is that she was a high school biology teacher. Babies will come in their own way in their own time. Sometimes in a traditonal way other times not.

[mmmheaven]

12:48 AM on 05/09/2012

So quick to criticize, nobody knows what was going on with her body. If God wanted her to have a baby, then she would have had one with our without a "typical preganancy".
CONGRATULATIONS ON THE NEW BABY!

[Tony Twohill]

03:47 PM on 05/10/2012

It bugs me when religious people can only use god in all of their arguments instead of science and reasoning. It's a cheap way out of learning anything. Thankfully, the world has made progress in spite of people like that and we no longer explain lightning as a weapon angry Zeus uses when he's throwing some kind of temper tantrum.

[mmmheaven]

11:07 PM on 05/10/2012

It bugs me that you feel the need to write this on MY COMMENT (which is MY OPINION) like its actually gonna change my mind or sway my thinking.

[sunestate]

06:06 PM on 05/08/2012

Congrats. Now that is what you call a pleasant surprise!

[Roommate]

05:33 PM on 05/08/2012

Grandma should not have kids, I guess taxpayers have to support the kid for 18 years now

[sadwitness]

05:51 PM on 05/08/2012

your comment makes no sense at all. I guess it doesn't matter to you what you say as long as it is as bitter as bile. Congrats, you have achieved full on bitterness and exceptional ignorance.

[14meows]

09:55 PM on 05/08/2012

OK, did I miss something in this article or video? I do not see nor do I hear how old this woman is so why are you calling her "Grandma"? And why do you think taxpayers will be supporting the kid for the next 18 years?

[fitness lady22]

03:26 PM on 05/08/2012

This is unbelievable, and this cryptic pregnancies seems like one thing that would be covered by the mommy bloggers.

-Nutritionfix.com

[Maxwell06]

02:36 PM on 05/08/2012

This whole story is hard to believe! Maybe there really is a Santa Clause.

[LikeaRollingStone]

01:55 PM on 05/09/2012

That's Santa Claus, without the "e."

And yes, I agree. This story is very hard to believe. Do these "I had no idea I was pregnant" mothers never notice something moving around in their bellies?

[peacockfeather20]

05:27 PM on 05/09/2012

Actually. no...

Some women don't gain weight or show at all. No belly, no feeling of movement at all. Its sort of called carying "in the back" or something I saw on a show dedicated to these kinds of pregnancies.

[jessica lepard]

11:55 AM on 05/08/2012

My cousin - a highly educated individual - didn't know she was pregnant until she was 7 and 1/2 months along. This girl is paper thin (maybe 100 lbs on a bad day) and was in a bikini the week before she found out - with not even a slight pooch. She had regular periods, took her birth control like normal, and didn't have one symptom. The only reason she even went to the doctor was because she kept feeling something weird fluttering in her stomach. It's totally plausible that a woman can go the entire pregnancy without experiencing any type of symptoms.

[looking for hope]

08:41 PM on 05/08/2012

This happened to me too (but I found out at four months when I started feeling the little fella). I was really underweight and never getting my period when I conceived. I was also using contraception! I had NO symptoms other than fatigue.

[merry4jens]

07:47 PM on 07/08/2012

This also happened to me, no symptoms on my second pregnancy, was on birth control pills, still getting period, didn't gain weight, and only found out because the hospital emergency room I went to for a sinus infection does routine pregnancy tests on EVERY woman that comes in to be seen that says she doesn't think she is pregnant or that thinks she may be prego......if they were prego they obviously didn't get tested. I was under an incredible amount of stress (2 part time jobs, 1 full time job, full time college classes and a 2 year old child to raise, I was not a dummy, I knew what to watch for in case of pregnancy, yet, there I was and ended up hearing that not only did I have a really bad sinus infection, but yes, you guessed it, I was prego for the second time. I'm from a north central and educated state, so, no, it doesn't happen in just the south as someone had suggested earlier, nor will all women/couples in this situation end up in the welfare system as another person on here assumed. I think we should just be congratulating them (and if they were working on adoption, then they most certainly aren't poor as has been alluded to, we had looked into it until we found out we were already expecting). We need to get out of the drama, say congrats!, let them live their lives and us ours.

[waitforitwaitforit]

10:50 AM on 05/08/2012

Kathy Griffin covered things like this in one of her standup routines.

"Well, I went in to squat to pee, and I looked down, and there was a BABY in the terlet!!!!"

[JeepGrandCher]

02:18 PM on 05/08/2012

HAHAHAHA

[Buck Kinslow]

10:49 AM on 05/08/2012

Huff Po commenters are some of the meanest, most demeaning people on the net. It goes to show how much little regard liberals show towards "common folk."

[sadwitness]

05:53 PM on 05/08/2012

you have no idea which comments come from liberals and which come from conservatives, just goes to show that you will try to use ANYTHING to drag others down to YOUR LEVEL.

[peacockfeather20]

05:29 PM on 05/09/2012

While saying it was all liberals was kind of wrong, he has... a big big point.

[ByeByeBushie]

07:09 AM on 05/08/2012

Just because she didn't know it, doesn't mean there weren't signs.

This is yet another reason why sex education and science are very important for everyone to learn at an early age- preferably before they find themselves surprised by pre-eclampsia (sp?)
or a baby.

[IrieMoon]

10:32 AM on 05/08/2012

Even women with the best sex education in the world can be fooled by her own body.

[ByeByeBushie]

10:47 AM on 05/08/2012

I tend to doubt it, unless she wasn't applying what she learned.
These are all explainable stories, but none seem to come from well-educated women.

I'm open to hearing from some, but anecdotes on the blog won't convince me otherwise.