Charlotte Summers, a 20-year-old woman from Australia, has said she gave birth just 17 hours after discovering she was pregnant. She experienced what is known as a cryptic pregnancy, a rare condition where a woman does not realise she is pregnant until very late or even until labour begins.
Speaking in a video on TikTok, Charlotte said she had noticed some physical changes but did not think she was pregnant. “I was still buying size eight clothes. Obviously, I gained a bit of a pudge, I guess. But I am in a two-and-a-half year relationship, I just kind of assumed it was a bit of happy relationship weight,” she said, as reported by The Mirror.
She also said she had been going through a stressful time and believed the weight gain was related to that. “I was also going through a lot of stressful things in my life at the time,” she added.
Charlotte visited a doctor on June 6 to check for possible gluten sensitivity. During the appointment, the doctor suggested a pregnancy test. “It came back positive, and they said I was in the early stages,” she recalled.
Later that same day, Charlotte went to the hospital for an ultrasound arranged by her boyfriend’s family. The scan revealed she was already 38 weeks and 4 days pregnant. “I kind of blacked out. I just grabbed my stuff, rang my partner and I was like, ‘Hey, we gotta go,’” she said.
She explained that her placenta was positioned at the front, which might have masked common signs of pregnancy. She had continued using birth control and believed she was having regular periods, which made the pregnancy even harder to detect.
Doctors found there was no fluid around the baby and said she might need to be induced. “Two hours later, I gave birth. I pushed for seven minutes and then my son was here. Again, I blacked out. I didn’t really comprehend what was going on,” Charlotte said in the Mirror report.
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Cryptic pregnancies are rare and can go unnoticed due to minimal symptoms. In such cases, women may still bleed, feel little to no movement from the baby, and gain very little weight. Charlotte and her baby are now doing well.
