{"id":511710,"date":"2026-04-04T01:20:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T01:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/511710\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T01:20:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T01:20:11","slug":"woman-who-thought-she-needed-massive-poo-ended-up-giving-birth-in-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/511710\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman who thought she needed ‘massive poo’ ended up giving birth in street"},"content":{"rendered":"

A British woman got the shock of her life when her severe stomach pains turned out to be a newborn baby.<\/p>\n

When Katie Brown woke up one morning experiencing what she believed were severe period pains, she had no idea that her life was about to change completely.<\/p>\n

The 27-year-old took paracetamol hoping it would settle the symptoms, but soon realised she couldn’t sit down.<\/p>\n

With the pain becoming increasingly unbearable, Katie decided to go to hospital<\/a> \u2013 only to end up giving birth on the street.<\/p>\n

“I woke up and thought I’m having period pains,” Katie recalled during an interview on This Morning<\/a>. “So I went and got some paracetamol, and then I couldn’t sit down.”<\/p>\n

By 7am, Katie was in unbearable pain and asked her mother for advice, still unaware that her pains were contractions.<\/p>\n

“It got to about seven o’clock, and I thought, ‘I can’t do this anymore, I’m going to have to go to A&E’. So, I told my mum, and then my mum came in and thought it was appendicitis,” she continued.<\/p>\n

Katie then called for an ambulance, which arrived around two-and-a-half hours later.<\/p>\n

When the paramedics walked Katie out onto the street and towards the ambulance, she suddenly ‘dropped to her hands and knees’, and out came baby William.<\/p>\n

\"AlreadyAlready a mum, Katie had no idea she was about to give birth to her second child (ITV)<\/p>\n

While Katie was still unaware that she was giving birth, telling hosts Dermot O’Leary and Alison Hammond, ‘I genuinely thought I was just having a massive poo’, her mother Diane realised what was happening and was able to catch her grandson’s head.<\/p>\n

“I could see something coming out, the shape,” recalled Diane, adding: “So I went down on my knees behind her and [caught him].”<\/p>\n

Doctors would later reveal that Katie had experienced a rare phenomenon known as a cryptic – or stealth – pregnancy.<\/p>\n

\"CrypticCryptic pregnancies account for one in every 2,500 births (ITV)What are cryptic pregnancies \u2013 and why do they happen?<\/p>\n

According to the Cleveland Clinic<\/a>, a cryptic pregnancy refers to a pregnancy where the mother either doesn’t experience typical pregnancy symptoms, has a negative test result or has irregular periods.<\/p>\n

Cryptic pregnancies are thought to occur in one in every 2,500 pregnancies, which equates to around 300 births a year in the UK<\/a>. Women who have PCOS, have recently given birth, are in perimenopause or are using birth control may be at higher risk.<\/p>\n

Cryptic pregnancy symptoms<\/p>\n

Symptoms often linked to cryptic pregnancy resemble those of a typical pregnancy, such as nausea, tiredness, and tender breasts, Pampers<\/a> states.<\/p>\n

“In any pregnancy, an individual might not notice any distinct early signs of pregnancy; in cryptic pregnancies, these symptoms might be missing or extremely subtle, often overlooked for a considerable duration,” the site adds.<\/p>\n

In Katie’s case, the regular ‘periods’ she believed she was having were actually a side effect of the combined oral contraceptive pill.<\/p>\n

“Every time she [seven-day] pill-free window, she had a withdrawal bleed,” explained This Morning’s Dr Zoe.<\/p>\n

Dr Zoe went on to explain that the position of baby William inside Katie’s womb meant that she did not develop a baby bump, while his movements were mistaken for sciatica after he was kicking a nerve in her back.<\/p>\n

“This can really happen,” Dr Zoe added. “Katie is the perfect example of somebody [where] the body just didn’t give those clues.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A British woman got the shock of her life when her severe stomach pains turned out to be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,102,2201,576,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-511710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-parenting","tag-sex-and-relationships","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}