One recent morning, Rebecca Johnson woke up with back pain. She tried to ignore it.
“I thought maybe it was the old mattress or my sciatica,” said Johnson, 37. “I took some Tylenol and went to work.”
The special education teacher was in a lot of pain when she arrived at school that morning. “I told my husband it felt like contractions, but it wasn’t supposed to be,” Johnson said.
It hurt too much to walk. Her back was throbbing and she felt a constant urge to urinate. Considering the symptoms, she thought it was a kidney stone. It was something I had never experienced before.
Johnson and her husband, Lee, rushed to the hospital. While waiting to see a doctor, the pain was increasing by the minute. The nurse who examined her also suspected kidney stones and took her to a small private room.
Suddenly, Johnson’s lower body became drenched in liquid. She thought it was uncontrolled urine. She then told the nurses that she needed to go to the bathroom, and as she was sitting on the commode chair next to her bed, she felt something move inside her.
She looked at the nurse who looked shocked. Johnson had given birth to a full-term baby girl. She didn’t know she was pregnant. “There’s a panic going on in my head,” Johnson says. During that time, “her husband became as white as a sheet.”
They transferred Johnson to a stretcher for delivery. “I screamed really loud,” he says. “I gave birth after three or four pushes.” They couldn’t believe it. The couple married in 2011 and spent years building a family. After undergoing infertility treatment, their first daughter, Clara Snow, was born in 2016.
“Then we were told we couldn’t have a child without intervention,” he says. Eight years later, the couple was surprised when Johnson naturally conceived their second daughter, Cecilia Lin, who was born in August 2024.
In February 2025, she discovered that her breast milk had dried up sooner than expected. This can happen with a new pregnancy, but the same thing happened 6 months after the birth of my first daughter. She took two pregnancy tests just to be sure, but both were negative.
Then, in April, she started feeling pain in her lower abdomen and thought it might be an ovarian cyst since she has PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome).
“I took some time off from work, took a few hot showers, and I was fine,” she said, noting that her periods haven’t returned since her second daughter was born, which is normal with polycystic ovary syndrome.
Nothing unusual happened over the next few months. Johnson often felt tired, which she said was because she was working full time and caring for a young child. She also noticed that she had not lost much weight from her previous pregnancy. She attributed this to PCOS.
“I never thought about the possibility of pregnancy,” she says. When the baby arrived, hospital staff were just as perplexed as the parents. The hospital doesn’t have a labor and delivery department, so Johnson was transferred to another hospital that night.
“Everyone was so kind, so loving,” he says. “Everyone came to see this crazy baby that came out of nowhere.”
According to the Cleveland Clinic, only 1 in 2,500 pregnancies, known as cryptic pregnancies, go undetected until delivery, but officials at Tri-Cities Hospital, where Johnson was treated for pain, said cases like Johnson’s happen more often than you might think.
“We see at least one person a year,” said Ashley Cundiff, the hospital’s director of nursing. “It was a really fun morning,” she said. Ms Johnson had been experiencing “sudden labor”, which is when contractions come quickly and sometimes unexpectedly.
“It all happened so quickly,” said Brittney Dillard, an emergency room nurse manager who attended Johnson’s birth. “It was definitely a shock to everyone.”
Mr. Johnson’s daughter, Carly Evangeline, was born weighing 8 pounds, and doctors believe her mother was between 38 and 40 weeks pregnant.
“She turned out perfect,” Johnson says. “We were told we would never have children naturally. The second child was a blessing, but this one was truly a miracle.”
Still, Johnson needed time to adjust to the new reality of having an unexpected newborn. As soon as the family returned home from the hospital, neighbors, friends and relatives dropped off baby clothes and food.
“We had a lot of support,” Johnson says. “This is amazing, but crazy. This is so real.” She added that her three daughters are “getting along really well” and adjusting well, and that Carly’s personality is starting to come through. He says she loves hugs and often turns to her side.
Johnson hopes their story brings hope to those facing fertility issues. While Carly’s arrival was certainly a shock, Johnson said she feels fulfilled as a family.
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