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.