A woman was stunned when her ‘bad back’ actually turned out to be a surprise baby, not realising she was pregnant until she started giving birth to her 10lb daughter.
Ceira Sutherland, 24, gave birth last November after being rushed to A&E with crippling stomach and rib pains.
She says she had no idea she was pregnant, claiming she’d even had a period six weeks before giving birth.
Ceira also had no visible baby bump, didn’t suffer any morning sickness and – stranger still – used condoms every time she had sex with her 27-year-old partner, Andrew Aitken.
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As she has polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), she’d even told she’d struggle to conceive.
Ceira, from Thurso, Caithness, Scotland, said: "We hadn't even thought about having children yet.
"I have PCOS so I was told quite young that I might not even be able to have children so this was a complete surprise.
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"We were using condoms every time so it was an even bigger surprise.
"Kids were something we both wanted but not for a while."
The pet shop worker said butcher Andrew was so stunned he stood ‘silently in shock’ for a while when little Amelia arrived – not least because, just two days before, Ceira had done an 11-hour shift at work when she started experiencing excruciating back pain.
"At work, I have to pull in big deliveries and it never bothered me before but my back felt so sore that I had to go sit down and put a hot pack on it,” she recalled.
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"I finished my shift and went to my partner's house.
"I felt really sick and my back was sore, I just went for a nap. I woke up and started to get rib pains but thought nothing of it.
"When it was about 11pm that night I thought 'something is not right' and I decided to go to A&E."
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She was sent home with painkillers, but ended up having to return just three hours later after the pain got worse – at which point doctors thought there might be something wrong with her gallbladder.
After taking a urine sample, Ceira was told she was pregnant, but believed at the time it was a false positive due to her PCOS.
"I didn't even know they were doing a pregnancy test on my urine sample until she said they've both come back positive,” she said.
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After further tests, it was eventually confirmed that Ceira was definitely pregnant, although medics estimated the baby could be no older than 20 weeks due to her recent period.
"Looking back now it's so obvious it was contractions because it was intense shooting pain every five minutes but I was never thinking 'I'm in labour',” she added.
The following day, a nurse went to swab Ceira for a final test.
“I just heard an 'oh',” Ceira continued. “I said 'is that a bad oh?' She said 'you're pregnant, the head's there, you're in labour'.
"Then it was a mad rush to take me to the labour unit. There were loads of doctors waiting in this room for me. I thought it would be a teeny baby and I didn't know if it was a survivable age.
"Once I started labour and her head was out, they said 'this is clearly not a 20-week old baby'."
Ceira gave birth to baby Amelia at 7pm on 27 November, weighing 9lbs 13oz.
The new mum worried about her daughter’s health after drinking alcohol throughout the pregnancy she never even knew she had.
“I think I had been on a night out in mid-October not knowing I was eight months pregnant,” she said.
"I was quite drunk, there were spirits and shots, it was a big night out.
"I felt a lot of guilt when she was born. When I found out I was definitely pregnant, I thought 'I've drunk and what am I going to give birth to right now?'.
"I was so relieved when they said she was completely fine."
Ceira said every doctor told her the pregnancy was a miracle, as she’d been told she couldn’t have kids due to her PCOS.
She said of her now nearly-one-year old: "She's honestly the easiest baby ever. From a week old, she's slept 12 hours a night.
"She's a really happy baby. It's crazy a year ago we didn't even know about her."
Jess Hardiman