I went into hospital with what I thought was a stomach bug… then doctors told me I was pregnant and in LABOR

A woman in Paraguay went to the hospital with stomach pains only to walk out with a newborn baby girl.

The 33-year-old mother of two did not realize she was pregnant, complaining only of a severe stomachache. When doctors at her local hospital asked if she was pregnant, she confidently said no.

But they discovered that she was well into the labor process, so close to giving birth that she did not have enough time to get to the maternity hospital nearby.

The woman gave birth naturally to a baby girl. She and her newborn are healthy and doing well.

After the baby was born, she and the mother were taken to the area maternity hospital. She and baby are doing well

The unnamed woman from the Paraguayan city of Itauguá went to the IPS Hospital last week with severe stomach pains. After a fainting spell, doctors moved her to an observation room where she insisted she was not pregnant.

When she began bleeding heavily, a gynecologist performed an exam that proved she was fully dilated.

Despite having given birth twice before, she had no idea she was just minutes from giving birth for a third time.

She gave birth to a baby girl weighing 6.6 pounds, which is considered a normal birthweight. She and her daughter were also taken to the city’s maternity hospital.

It is relatively rare for a woman to carry a baby to term without knowing she is pregnant, though perhaps more common than people may think.

An estimated one in 400 or 500 women have what is known as a ‘cryptic pregnancy,’ also known as a stealth pregnancy. The term typically applies to women who are at least five months pregnant before realizing it.

And an estimated one in 2,500 do not know they are pregnant until right before giving birth.

Many women falsely believe that if they are on birth control, they cannot get pregnant. But no form of birth control is 100 percent effective.

And many types of birth control cause a woman to stop menstruating for a time or cause intermittent bleeding not indicative of a period.

A temporary halt of menstruation is a dead giveaway for pregnancy, but in the case of contraceptives that disrupt a normal cycle, women may not recognize that a missed period is a symptom of pregnancy.

Every woman carries pregnancy weight differently, and for some women the appearance of a baby bump comes later into pregnancy or remains small, potentially making pregnancy tougher to spot.

The severe abdominal pains that drove the Paraguayan woman to the hospital could have been normal contractions caused by the uterus tightening and relaxing, which helps push the baby out of the uterus.