Garden Grove Woman Gives Birth Without Knowing She Was Pregnant

(AP) ORANGE, Calif. A 39-year-old Garden Grove woman went to an emergency room with a stomach ache and ended up with a baby.

Hospital officials say April Barnum didn't know she was pregnant when she came to an emergency room near her home this week, but gave birth to a full-term, 7-pound, 7-ounce boy by Cesarean section.

The 420-pound woman says her size kept her and others from realizing she was carrying the baby.

Barnum says if the baby kicked, she didn't feel it.

Doctors saw the baby when they took X-rays of her abdominal area.

She was sent to University of California Irvine for prenatal testing, where doctors determined there was a healthy fetus ready to be delivered.

The baby is named Walter Edwards, after Barnum's fiance.


wow

That exact same thing happened to a former friend of mine and she was still having her monthly period

She had stomach pains and in the end went to the hospital. She was told that she is in labour. She was surprised and did not believe them.

Next morning I got a phone call (I did not know anything) and she was calling from the hospital and told me she had a baby and I was like coz we had gone shopping together 3 days prior and she did not look pregnant, no loose fitting clothes.

Her boyfriend had just gone out of town on business. He got one heck of a surprise when he came back

more of a mysterie than her having a baby is how she managed
to get pregnant in the first place

420 pounds

this dude must have been a contortionist.

I was constipated once and was in labour for 20 hours

See, this why, for the past couple of years I let myself go,
especially to such an extreme.

So that if I end up getting knocked up,
no one will be the wiser.

ok that kind of surprise just isn't good for anyone concerned.

ladies, please try and be aware if you are pregnant in future. thank you.

I don't understand how anyone can be pregnant and not know.

That's gotta be a whole, whole lotta denial going on. Something's wrong there.

CarrieMpls said:

you think?

i also knew a girl that did not know she was pregnant till she had "terrible stomach pains" and went to the hospital.

she was young, not a large woman... but had put on weight and had been trying to loose the extra pounds no one thought she was pregnant. thankfully she delivered a healthy baby


my mom also talks of a neighbor of ours being pregnant and no one in the community could tell. her husband phoned around to deliver the news of the new baby and everyone was so surprised lol... how embarrassing.

emm said:

Happened in my family too.

And everybody thought I was the irresponsible one in the bloodline.

I just hope she wasnt smoking or drinking or even taking some kind of meds

i remember this show from the '70s "E.R." (no, not THAT E.R.) which was a comedy with elliott gould and on one episode, a girl came in with gas pains and ended up having a baby. so there's that.

i doubt they would have xray'd her stomach if they had believed her to be pregnant... so they were fooled too!

CarrieMpls said:

Wouldn't a person have symptoms that they didn't have before that may suggest that they were pregnant?

the worst part about these stories are you end up wondering what kind of stuff they did not thinking they were pregnant. Like smoking, drinking, and all sorts of other stuff.

psychodelicide said:

YES.

There's honestly no way you can be pregnant and not know it. You simply can't. I don't buy it for a second. Even if you don't think your belly has grown there are a bazillion other symptoms. The fatigue, the hormones, and eventually the something MOVING AROUND INSIDE OF YOU.
Someone has to seriously have some kind of major mental blockage of denial.

Anx said:

Actually, in the "other" E.R. there was an episode where a woman was admitted with severe stomach pains and turned out to be in labor when she didn't even know that she was pregnant.

So skipping your period for 9 months didn't give her a hint?

That makes no fucking sense! It's like your salon canceling your appointments every month for 9 months--you should know something is seriously wrong!

IstenSzek said:

I say give him a medal for courage above & beyond the call of duty. He actually climbed on top and made love to a 420 pound woman? Dayum! You can get lost in that sh!t. He's more of a man than I am.

I'm with Imago & Carrie, this story doesn't make sense. Something about it smells fishy.

CarrieMpls said:

Agreed!

just trying to imagine the agility necessary to mount, pump, and dismount a 420 lb. woman.....

EEEEEWWWWW!!!!

emm said:

they may have thought that she had an obstruction or some kind of torsion of her intestines. They may have given her a barium constrast test and needed to X-ray to get the results.

I guess they could have run a pregnancy test first but usually women know when they're pregnant so I'm not so suprised that they didn't. I guess when someone is 420lbs. people don't automatically assume pregnancy.

Imago said:

i'm wondering if her periods were wacky anyway because of her weight?

Sometimes women spot during their pregnancy and they think it's their period.

In anycase, she obviously wasn't very in tune with her body. Poor woman.

JasmineFire said:

This is truly disturbing. This woman needs to lose weight pronto.

Imago said:

I've only heard of 'losing' your period from being underweight, not over.

CarrieMpls said:

Body builders and other women who have a large amount of muscle mass also lose their periods. They're not underweight, but their bodies do deviate from what is considered the medical norm.

The reason why I wonder about it is because when the body is stressed, periods go kinda beserk. Carrying around that extra weight would put a great deal of stress on her body, even though she was able to carry and birth a healthy full term baby with no apparent incident.

CarrieMpls said:

Oh, my issues aren't with her losing her period, it's with her being 450 pounds.



If a woman's body fat falls below a certain percentage (I think it's 4 or 6 percent or something) she will stop menstruating regardless of her weight. So, Anorexic woman, and body builders would experience that.


But this woman--to be pregnant and not realize it? Good lord. She obviously lives with a great deal of discomfort if she can't didn't notice a baby kicking inside of her.

Imago said:

oh, I don't doubt it.

Imago said:

Some babies don't kick, though.

She just sounds like someone who is very out of touch with her body, which is sad.

JasmineFire said:

I mean, how would she know if she had a lump in her breast? Or some other really alarming thing.


I got a good deal of weight to lose right now too, but damn. I can't imagine not knowing what's going on with my body--scary.


And I saw her being interviewed on CNN. She's seems really sweet and very nice. And truly happy to have the baby. But she's gotta lose that weight!