When Sarah Bailey started experiencing crippling back pain, she thought she was simply suffering from tummy trouble.
But after a trip to the loo the 29-year-old discovered that, despite no symptoms whatsoever, she was actually nine months pregnant and seconds away from giving birth!
“It was so surreal. It felt like I wasn’t really there,’ a flabbergasted Sarah tells New Idea exclusively.
Sarah and her security worker partner David Lee, 29, had already experienced a baby miracle when they welcomed their twin girls Isabella and Tamiya in September 2016.
Already parents to a boy, Rio, now 11, they suddenly grew to a family of five. Life ticked along happily after that – with the family jetting over from their home in the UK to Ireland for a wedding in August 2017.
There, the drinks flowed – something Sarah now looks back on with feelings of guilt.
“We’ve worked out I must have conceived in July 2017, so it feels bizarre to look back on those wedding photos now knowing I was pregnant in them,” she tells New Idea.
“When Desirae was born, I felt guilty that I’d been drinking while I’d not known she was there.”
For months, Sarah showed no symptoms of pregnancy, such as weight gain or sickness.
It was only later that she discovered the position of her placenta, which was in front of her uterus, had been masking her baby bump.
She also thought she was still having monthly periods – but now knows the bleeding was actually her placenta slowly rupturing.
“I’d not long had the twins, so assumed it was my body getting back to normal after the hormones and trauma of the birth,” Sarah explains.
“David and I had been using condoms, but I guess we were just in that tiny percentage of people they don’t work for.”
Sarah started having backaches in April 2018.
“This wasn’t normal back pain. It was almost behind my lungs,” the mum recalls.
“Doctors have since said that because Desirae was breech virtually the entire pregnancy, the pain was her moving against my back, ready to get into position for being born.”
On April 12, the pain intensified. Assuming she was just constipated, something she had suffered in the past, Sarah asked her mum Pat, who lived nearby, to fetch some laxatives.
Within minutes though, she was racing to the toilet, where she discovered she was bleeding.
“It was like big clots gushing from me,” Sarah recalls with a shiver. “I was terrified. Mum deserves a medal. She was trying her best to reassure me that I’d be okay.
“She examined me, and could see something. Then, she suddenly realised what it was and told me, ‘You’re having a baby.’”
Sarah recalls feeling an overwhelming urge to push, before glimpsing a baby between her legs and passing out.
Coming to, her house was swarming with paramedics after David had called an ambulance.
Her baby girl wasn’t breathing when she was born, but thanks to quick work by paramedics who were soon on the scene, both mum and baby are now doing well.
“At some point in hospital, I must’ve drifted off again, because suddenly I woke up and Mum was there at my bedside,” Sarah recalls. “She said, ‘The baby is absolutely fine.’ At first, I’d no idea what she meant. Then I remembered I had given birth.
“We didn’t know how to tell people, so David suggested posting on Facebook so everyone knew in one go.
“At first, people thought I was messing around and that I’d posted a picture of a doll.”
After three days in hospital, Sarah and Desirae – who was born weighing 3.5kg and is believed to have been full term – came home. The now mum-of-four had given away all her baby supplies thinking she wouldn’t need them again – but family and friends rallied around to help.
Now the picture of health, Desirae is doted on by her three older siblings. Sarah has had a slightly tougher time fighting off infections, but despite that, she feels lucky to be alive – and a mum to her miracle girl.
“She’s such a wonderful little baby, and she’s living proof that the body doesn’t always react to pregnancy in the way you’d expect.”
For more on Parenting, head to the Practical Parenting site.
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