For Melissa Surgecoff and her fiancé Donnie Campbell, March 8 started just like any other day, until Surgecoff suddenly began to feel intense cramps and pain.
“I called 911 because we thought she had a kidney stone,” Campbell said.
The couple, from Peabody, Massachusetts, have been together for seven years due to health problems following Campbell’s traumatic brain injury and Surgecoff’s multiple sclerosis.
After their wedding was postponed in 2020, they postponed starting a family, or so they thought.
“We always wanted our ducks in a row, we wanted to get married, we wanted to move, we wanted to have the right jobs,” said Surgecoff.
But little Liam had other plans.
“We were just in a bit of shock and didn’t expect it, and all of a sudden there’s a baby in the bathroom,” Campbell said.
When a Massachusetts woman developed severe cramps, she thought she had kidney stones. Little did she know she was pregnant and in labor for the past nine months. We investigate how – and how often – pregnancies go unnoticed.
As it turned out, Surgecoff did not pass kidney stones at all.
“The EMTs came,” she said, “they were looking for this kidney stone and it ended up being a baby.”
Surgecoff was just as shocked as anyone about how she could have been nine months pregnant and was unknown.
She says she’s always had an irregular cycle, and in hindsight, she had gained a little bit of weight and felt flutter that she thought was just gas.
But when it came to the weight gain, Surgecoff attributed it to something else.
“We thought it was medication because I had just switched to a new drug for multiple sclerosis and that was one of the symptoms, gain weight,” she said.
Medical experts in Boston, Massachusetts have sought to dispel rumors that the COVID vaccine causes infertility and address a lack of data on the vaccine’s impact on pregnant women.
After the initial shock subsides – and family members shower them with diapers and clothes – Surgecoff and Campbell say they’re getting the hang of this parenting thing, even if it wasn’t in their plans.
“Yeah, it’s great now,” said Surgecoff, “so I wouldn’t change it for anything.”
Despite not having prenatal care, Liam is doing fine and only had to spend a few days in the hospital before she could go home with Mom and Dad.