Northants Teen Rushed To Hospital With Pains Surprised To Give Birth Hours Later

A 17-year-old who went to hospital with stomach pains was baffled when she gave birth to a surprise baby just hours later. 

Courtney Evans feared she had appendicitis when she woke up suffering with the shooting pains and cramping, so she and her partner Bryn Tallet decided to make an urgent trip to hospital.

Courtney had been taking the contraceptive pill and hadn’t experienced any noticeable changes to her body, other than a slight weight gain she put down to common fluctuation, so she was understandably taken aback when doctors revealed she was 34 weeks pregnant and in labour with her son.

Recalling the bizarre experience, Courtney, from Daventry, Northants, said:

When I woke up it felt like period pains, I just felt like I was having a bad stomach. I was on and off sleep as it was early hours in the morning waking me up. I woke up Leo’s dad, my partner, and said, ‘I’m in a lot of pain now’.

We walked round to his mum’s to see what she thought and she took me to hospital thinking it was my appendix. When we went into A&E though they didn’t know the cause of the pain either, so they gave me morphine thinking it was my appendix as well.

Another doctor came to look at me and felt my stomach and did a scan, they looked at me and said, ‘that’s your baby’.

I remember saying ‘are you joking?’.

Courtney continued:

They took me into a separate room on my own and did a few tests and then they took me down to the labour ward.

All they could see was his heartbeat and I had to have injections in my back for his lungs. They had his incubator waiting outside when I gave birth.

Just hours later Courtney first went to hospital, baby Leo Tallett arrived, weighing 4lb 4oz, though the new mum was so shocked she struggled to hold her son at first.

Courtney went on:

I found out in the hospital as I was giving birth, so the minute I found out I was pregnant I was in labour anyway.

They put him on me and I couldn’t hold him at first. It wasn’t that I didn’t love him, but I was in so much shock.

I just needed a minute after giving birth to the child I didn’t know I had. So when everyone was going ‘here’s your baby boy’, I was just thinking, ‘oh god, I don’t know what to do’.

Courtney, who is now 20, decided to share her story to raise awareness of the fact contraception isn’t always effective. She emphasised she wouldn’t change the birth of her son ‘for the world’, but explained the lack of indicators left her struggling to come to terms with her newfound motherhood.

The mum-of-one claimed she suffered no morning sickness, and put her absent periods down to being on the pill. Her lack of a baby bump was the result of Leo being positioned in her back.

Courtney pointed out contraceptives cannot always be relied upon, saying:

It’s mad looking back thinking ‘how didn’t I know?’ but I can understand why I didn’t. They say if you even wee too much it can cancel the pill out, it can be anything.

Contraceptives aren’t 100% anyway, there’s still a chance of getting pregnant.

I’ve been on the injections since I’ve had him and that seems to work for me, but different things work for different people.

Leo was born ‘en caul’ – a rare occurrence that means he was delivered still inside the intact amniotic sac. Courtney was told the unusual occurrence was ‘lucky’, and she was relieved to learn that Leo was perfectly healthy, despite the fact his mother was previously unaware of his existence.

Courtney was kept in hospital for four days after giving birth to allow doctors to monitor her and Leo, but they eventually went home to start their new lives as mother and son.

At the time, the teen was completely unprepared. She still lived with her parents and didn’t have so much as a nappy for Leo to wear.

She recalled:

My mum and dad had to go out and buy everything, apparently they walked into Mothercare and thought ‘what the hell is going on?’.

Usually you have nine months to prepare but we had no time.

Courtney relied heavily on her mum to learn how to look after a newborn, and learned how feed, change and bathe her son. Her partner, Bryn, had been brought up with younger brothers and so soon got used to looking after his new son, and the pair continued to receive a lot of support from Courtney’s parents.

Courtney said:

My family were amazing, parents can react in any way but I couldn’t have done it without them and they helped us with buying things. I was living at their house so they got a room ready for him.

Everybody told me I took to it really well, the first couple of weeks is just a blur to me looking back.

I took every day as it came really – his feeds and baths – my mum has done it with me and my brother before, so she was telling me everything to do.

She was helping me to hold his head in the bath and telling me how to feed him, everything like that. It didn’t take me too long to adjust to it, after a few weeks I was enjoying it like any mum should.

Courtney has now lived in her own house for two years, and she’s swapped to having contraceptive injections, which seem to be more effective for her, in an effort to prevent any more surprise children coming her way.

The 20-year-old isn’t quite ready to have another baby just yet, but she’s loving life with Leo, who she described as her ‘little best friend’.

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